Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Holiday Movies That Made Us’ On Netflix, A Behind-The-Scenes Look At Two Modern Holiday Favorites

The Holiday Movies That Made Us is an extension of Netflix’s popular The Movies That Made Us docuseries, which takes a look at the enduring appeal of modern classics, while talking to some of the people who were involved in bringing them to the screen. This time around, two modern holiday classics, Elf and The Nightmare Before Christmas, are profiled.

THE HOLIDAY MOVIES THAT MADE US: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Will Ferrell being filmed dancing on a table… in a mental institution.

The Gist: In the Elf episode, we find out that screenwriter Robert Berenbaum had this vision to make a movie that pays homage to the Rankin-Bass holiday specials like Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. He also wanted to continue the warm family holiday movie tradition that he relied on since his dad died when he was young.

The original studio that optioned the then-unknown Berenbaum’s screenplay wanted Chris Farley as the lead, which wasn’t Berenbaum’s choice. He then met producer Jon Berg, and the script eventually got to Ferrell, then just beginning his film career while still at SNL, and Cale Boyter, a junior executive at New Line Cinema. They chose Jon Favreau to direct because, despite his relative inexperience as a director, his vision for the film matched theirs. None of them had much experience making movies, but they ended up with a $30 million budget, and went from there.

The rest of the episode has stories about James Caan, who called himself “Jimmy The Dream,” the forced perspective shots that DP Greg Gardiner created to avoid lots of CGI, the last-minute legal cold feet New Line had regarding the Rankin-Bass tributes, and the chopped up cut the studio made for the film’s first screening.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Movies That Made Us has perfected their particular storytelling style, which includes talks with many of the producers and other behind-the-scenes creative folks that made a particular film. They tell it in a funny, not-taking-this-seriously style but always go for the heartwarming moments. The holiday version is no different.

Our Take: Here’s what always surprises us about The Movies That Made Us: As silly as the jump-cuts can get, they don’t get in the way of giving a good view of how the particular film that’s being profiled got made. Every film has its unique journey to becoming an enduring classic, and those journeys are what this series excels at laying out.

Just like its main series, The Holiday Movies That Make Us isn’t all that interested in talking to the film’s stars. If they speak to one or two of the supporting players, the director, or — in the case of Elf — the writer, producers, and technical talent, that’s more than enough for them. All the serendipity, coincidences, strokes of good luck, and amazing skills of the BTS folks are documented, and even for a film as popular as Elf, there are facts that may be out there if you look at the film’s Wikipedia or IMDb page, but aren’t common knowledge.

Would we have liked to seen Favreau or maybe Bob Newhart interviewed in the Elf episode? Sure. But considering how long Berenbaum had been shopping that script, the fact that he stuck to his guns about his vision for it despite being a rookie screenwriter was fascinating to us. The anecdotes about the guerilla filming method in New York and how Favreau got Jimmy Caan to get angry during his confrontation scene with Ferrell were more than enough to make this episode worth watching.

Parting Shot: Berg says “I feel like shit holding this,” referring to a framed Variety article showing Elf topping the box office.

Sleeper Star: We liked hearing from the Chiodo brothers, who did the stop-action effects, and how quickly they got them done in time for a studio screening.

Most Pilot-y Line: The series’ requisite scene where one of the people interviewed returns to a location to evoke nostalgia didn’t quite work here, because the cafe were Berenbaum and Berg met looked like a wreck in the middle of being renovated.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Because of their funny-but-informative takes on the films they profile, the episodes of The Holiday Movies That Made Us should fly by.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Holiday Movies That Made Us On Netflix