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Top 10 Best Thanksgiving Movies (2026)

The best Thanksgiving movies have to hold a room that is overfed, half asleep and spread across three generations with one remote control between them. The real choice is whether the evening wants the holiday as travel chaos, as a dinner table with something simmering under it, or as the quiet hours once the plates are stacked. Late November fills up with Christmas titles arriving early, so everything below stays with the November holiday itself.

Some of these can run with small kids and grandparents in the same room. Others belong to eleven at night, once the house has thinned out and the leftovers are wrapped. There is a 1969 folk shaggy-dog story, a 25-minute cartoon, and a concert filmed on the holiday itself, so the choosing comes down to who is still awake.

1.Planes, Trains and Automobiles (Anniversary Edition) - by Steve Martin

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (Anniversary Edition)
For anyone who does not live where the meal happens, the trip is the story. Two films here spend their whole running time on the wrong side of the front door. A cancelled flight out of New York strands an advertising executive with a shower-curtain-ring salesman, and the pair spend three days failing to reach Chicago by Wednesday night. Planes, Trains and Automobiles runs as broad comedy until Del Griffith's last scene quietly changes what the whole trip was about. Most viewers already carry a memory of it, which makes it the safest thing to start an evening with.
$10.99
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2.The Daytrippers (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray) - by Anne Meara

The Daytrippers (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray)
On the morning after Thanksgiving a Long Island woman finds a love letter addressed to her husband, and the entire family climbs into one station wagon to drive into Manhattan and ask him about it. Greg Mottola shot his first feature mostly inside that car, so The Daytrippers plays like eavesdropping from the back seat. It fits anyone who finds the holiday funniest when relatives are stuck together in a small space.
$29.99$39.95-25%
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3.Home for the Holidays - by Robert Downey Jr.

Home for the Holidays
Dinner is where the year's unfinished business gets said out loud. Three of these Thanksgiving movies keep almost everything on one table and let the pressure build from there. Claudia loses her job, kisses her boss goodbye and flies to Baltimore for two days with parents who still smoke indoors. Jodie Foster directed Home for the Holidays with an ear for the exact pitch a family hits by the second hour, and Robert Downey Jr. arrives to push it higher. Anyone who dreads the questions that start once the plates are passed will recognize most of it.
$11.99$14.98-20%
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4.The Ice Storm (Criterion Collection) - by Kevin Kline

The Ice Storm (Criterion Collection)
New Canaan, Connecticut, over the 1973 holiday weekend, with two well-off families drifting toward a key party while Nixon denies everything on the television. Ang Lee keeps The Ice Storm cool and unhurried while the adults behave considerably worse than their teenagers. It is the least comforting title on this page and the one most likely to leave a room silent.
$29.99$39.95-25%
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5.The Humans (Blu-ray)

The Humans (Blu-ray)
Brigid hosts her parents and her sister in a damp Chinatown duplex where the bulbs keep blowing and something thuds in the ceiling. Stephen Karam adapted his own play for The Humans and treated the building itself as the source of the dread. It runs 108 minutes close to real time, which makes it the nearest thing here to sitting at a genuinely difficult table.
$17.99$21.99-18%
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6.A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (DVD) - by Todd Barbee

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (DVD)
Some of the holiday viewing has to work for a nine-year-old and a grandparent at once, which narrows the field quickly. These two hold a mixed crowd without anyone having to leave. Toast, popcorn and jellybeans are what Snoopy serves after Peppermint Patty invites herself to Charlie Brown's house for dinner, and the joke has outlived every kid who first laughed at it. Twenty-five minutes is short enough to run before the real meal rather than after it. This is the one a four-year-old will sit through without negotiation, and the adults in the room will not mind either.
$14.99$18.98-21%
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7.Addams Family Values - by Anjelica Huston

Addams Family Values
The Camp Chippewa Thanksgiving pageant, with Wednesday Addams cast as Pocahontas against her will, ends in a burning stockade and a speech nobody at that camp saw coming. Addams Family Values spends the rest of its time on Fester's disastrous marriage, but those ten minutes are why people remember the sequel. Being sharp for adults and broad enough for a ten-year-old is a rare combination in late November.
$19.95$25.99-23%
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8.The Last Waltz (Criterion Collection) (4K Ultra HD) - by Mavis Staples

The Last Waltz (Criterion Collection) (4K Ultra HD)
Late evening thins the audience down to whoever is still awake and willing to sit with something slower. These three reward that hour rather than the crowded one before it. Winterland Ballroom, Thanksgiving night 1976, and The Band played its farewell show to an audience that had been served a turkey dinner before the amplifiers went on. Martin Scorsese filmed The Last Waltz with seven cameras and a shot list, which is why a concert this old still looks composed rather than captured. Put it on after the meal and it does the work of a record nobody has to change.
$38.99$49.95-22%
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9.Alice's Restaurant (DVD) - by Arlo Guthrie

Alice's Restaurant (DVD)
Arlo Guthrie's eighteen-minute song about a Thanksgiving dinner, a closed dump and a littering conviction that kept him out of Vietnam became a feature in 1969, with Guthrie playing a version of himself. Arthur Penn directed Alice's Restaurant loose and deliberately aimless, so the film drifts the way the song does. It suits a late hour and a small audience far better than a full living room.
$18.99$24.95-24%
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10.Scent of a Woman (DVD) - by Al Pacino

Scent of a Woman (DVD)
A scholarship student takes a Thanksgiving weekend job minding a blind retired colonel and ends up flown to New York, where the man intends to spend money he does not have. Al Pacino won his Oscar for Scent of a Woman, and the tango and the Ferrari are the two scenes everyone quotes back. At well over two hours it is the longest sit here, which suits a night when nobody is driving home.
$8.99$9.99-10%
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Match the Film to the Hour

Match the film to the hour rather than to the holiday and the evening arranges itself, with something short before the meal and something longer after it. If none of these fits the room you are actually feeding, browse more family movies and work backward from who is on the sofa.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes a Thanksgiving movie different from a Christmas movie?
Thanksgiving films tend to cover about forty-eight hours: someone arrives, everyone eats, and whatever was buried comes up before the drive home. There is no gift-giving arc and no redemption deadline, which is why The Ice Storm can end on an unresolved note without feeling broken, and why Scent of a Woman spends the holiday nowhere near a family at all. December films almost never allow either.
What can you put on while the food is still cooking?
Something short and forgiving, because nobody in the kitchen will watch it properly. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is 25 minutes and survives being half-heard from the next room. Addams Family Values works for the same slot with older kids, since the pageant lands even if you only catch the last few minutes of it.
Is there a Thanksgiving movie for someone who has seen Planes, Trains and Automobiles a dozen times?
The Daytrippers is the closest substitute in spirit, with the same trapped-in-a-vehicle comedy and a much stranger ending. If the appeal was the family friction rather than the travel, Home for the Holidays covers that ground with a bigger cast and a smaller radius.
Are Thanksgiving movies too bleak for a family watch?
Two of these are genuinely heavy. The Ice Storm and The Humans both sit with people who are not saying what they mean, and neither offers much relief at the end. Everything else on the page is safe for a room that only wants to digest, and the Camp Chippewa pageant remains the surest laugh of the ten.
Do any of these work without much of a plot?
Two of them barely have one, on purpose. The Last Waltz is a concert with interviews in between, so it can run in the background of a card game and still hold anyone who looks up. Alice's Restaurant wanders in a similar way, though it asks a bit more attention than the music does.

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