Your Brain Tricks You Into Loving Cheesy Christmas Movies
For 11 months of the year, we are discerning movie-watchers. In December, we binge-watch ‘A Christmas Prince.’
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I cannot find Eloise at Christmastime anywhere.
Or rather, I can’t find it streaming anywhere. I can buy a DVD for $6 on Amazon, but then I would have to buy a DVD player and also figure out how to hook that up to a television. I assumed it would stream on Disney+, but there’s some kind of darker conspiracy afoot and it is nowhere to be found.
I’m 27 years old, and there are plenty of actual good television shows and movies to watch. Movies that are critically acclaimed, obvious Oscar bait. But I want to watch Eloise bring Christmas joy to the entire Plaza Hotel, while a frazzled Nanny (Julie Andrews) tries to get the goddamn garland to hang in the archway—if only Eloise’s constant slamming of doors wouldn’t send it crashing every time!
Reader, trust me when I say she delivers a speech to the elder council of elves (and the entire North Pole) that had me crying in my bed, by myself, on a Saturday night.
Thwarted in my desires to stream Eloise’s antics, I settled for Noelle, an original Disney+ movie starring Anna Kendrick and Bill Hader as Santa and his younger sister, Noelle. Basically, Hader is about to take over the gig from his dad, Old Santa, but — gasp! — he actually kind of hates Christmas. And he disappears! And so Kendrick has to chase him down (he ends up in Arizona, long story) and save Christmas and prove her worth.
Reader, trust me when I say she delivers a speech to the elder council of elves (and the entire North Pole) that had me crying in my bed, by myself, on a Saturday night.
When I asked Elana Katz, a senior faculty member at the Ackerman Institute for the Family, why I still crave Claymation around December 1, she explained that these cheesy, predictable, too-cliché movies are like expressways to our limbic system, the emotional control center of our brains.
“The emotional side of our brain picks up emotional signals, registers danger…
