Yahoo Finance 15 Best Movies to Watch During Hanukkah With the Whole Family
- 1/16
15 Best Movies to Watch During Hanukkah With the Whole Family
Shout out to Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights for its overt reference of Hanukkah in the film’s title and plot alike, but how many other Hanukkah movies come immediately to your mind? (Go ahead, we’ll wait.)
Far more seasonal movies are actually movies about Christmas with Hanukkah subplots tossed in for good measure — to tick the requisite inclusivity box, or attract a trickle of new viewers. Other movies have strong Jewish themes — including history, culture, values and immigration stories — but they’re far from being technically considered Hanukkah movies.
The fact is, when it comes to holiday movies, the Jewish community is badly lacking in representation. But that doesn’t have to mean your TV must go dark during the Festival of Lights. That's why we've rounded up the best movies to watch during Hanukkah. Our list includes a range of films just right for all eight nights of Hanukkah, for viewers of all ages.
So light the menorah and get your decorations ready, stack a mountain of delicious latkes and sufganiyot on the coffee table, and cozy up under a blanket on the couch for these Hanukkah movies and movies with Jewish themes, from poignant to just plain silly.
Need more entertainment? Look to these Hanukkah games, party ideas and amazing recipes!
courtesy - 2/16
1) Eight Crazy Nights
amazon.com
$12.99
Adam Sandler plays a 30-something party animal who overdoes it enough to face legal trouble. It’s the holidays, so the judge gives Sandler’s character one more chance to redeem himself: He can avoid jail time by doing community service as a referee for the youth basketball league. He thinks it’s a great deal… until he meets his boss. Although it's animated, it’s hardly for the littlest kids: Toilet jokes and other off-color humor make this one PG-13.
amazon.com - 3/16
2) Full-Court Miracle
amazon.com
$5.99
Disney Channel based this original Hanukkah movie on the real story of Lamont Carr, the beloved basketball coach. In the movie, a college basketball star is sidelined from the game because of a knee injury, so he becomes the head coach of a yeshiva’s hapless team in Philadelphia.
amazon.com - 4/16
3) Mistletoe & Menorahs
amazon.com
$9.99
A hard-working toy exec has to learn about Hanukkah — fast — to seal the deal with a new account. So she reaches out to her co-worker’s friend, who’s consumed with trying to turn his bachelor pad into a winter wonderland to impress his girlfriend’s dad. After initially failing to get along, they realize the need each other’s holiday knowledge. Eventually, they learn just how much they have in common… and, of course, romance ensues.
amazon.com - 5/16
4) The Hebrew Hammer
Paramount Home Video
amazon.com
$12.97
Hanukkah meets the Blaxploitation genre in this cult-favorite parody movie: The Hebrew Hammer is an orthodox Jew (played by Adam Goldberg) who goes on a mission to save Hanukka from Santa’s evil son, Damian (Andy Dick), who wants to destroy it along with Kwanzaa.
amazon.com - 6/16
5) All I Want Is Christmas
amazon.com
$9.99
This flick plays on the theme that Jewish kids feel left out of all the magic that goes along with Christmas. Here, a Jewish boy on his way to disappointingly sunny Florida tries to pursue his holiday dreams by swapping plane tickets with another kid, who is on his way to a wintry wonderland in Christmastown, Washington.
amazon.com - 7/16
6) Little Fockers
amazon.com
$14.99
This sequel to Meet the Parents (2000) and Meet the Fockers (2004) provides some comedy relief for your Hanukkah nights. Or at least it tries to: the third film in the trilogy was utterly panned by critics. In this plot, the Fockers meet up for a celebratory holiday gathering. And for its misses, at least you get Barbra Streisand and Ben Stiller — and that’s a lot.
amazon.com - 8/16
7) Hitched For The Holidays
Hallmark
amazon.com
$5.99
A commitmentphobic bachelor goes online in an attempt to fulfill his grandmother’s dying wish to see him find a partner. There, he meets another Jewish single New Yorker trying to appease her family by appearing to be coupled up. The pair agrees to pretend they’re together to get through Christmas and Hanukkah with their families. Spoiler: Romance ensues.
Hallmark - 9/16
8) The Night Before
amazon.com
$12.99
It’s Christmas Eve and a group of childhood guy friends (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and Anthony Mackie) usually spend the night getting wild. But they’re adulting now, so the tradition is changing big time. Still, they set out to find the most major Christmas party ever, the Nutcracker Ball. As usual, Rogen brings the Jewish humor in this holiday flick.
amazon.com - 10/16
9) An American Tail
FIEVEL
amazon.com
$9.99
Who could forget the ‘80s’ lovable animated Fievel? He’s a young Russian mouse who finds himself separated from his parents on the way to America, where they’re headed for safety because they think it’s a land without cats. When he gets there, he tries to find his family and keep up hope… all while dodging cats.
amazon.com - 11/16
10) Double Holiday
ALLIED VAUGHN
amazon.com
$13.99
Hallmark Channel’s much-touted Hanukkah movie is also kind of Christmas-y, which isn’t surprising. In the movie, a hard-charging career woman gets a promotion opportunity that dashes her Hanukkah plans. The boss asks her, as well as her main competitor for the promotion, to work together on the office Christmas party to demonstrate cooperation and flexibility.
amazon.com - 12/16
11) Fiddler On the Roof
amazon.com
$3.99
This musical comedy-drama is an adaptation of the 1964 Broadway show by the same name. The plot focuses on Tevye, a poor dad to five daughters in pre-revolutionary Russia, and his efforts to keep up Jewish traditions against antisemitism — and the will of his kids.
amazon.com - 13/16
12) An American Pickle
Seth Rogen stars as both Ben and Herschel Greenbaum in this movie, which dives into Jewish family love and tradition across generations. It’s not specifically a Hanukkah movie per se, but it’s funny, poignant and actually kind of deep fare that’s just right for holiday time. Originally available on HBO Max, this movie is now widely available for streaming.
HBO - 14/16
13) Crossing Delancey
amazon.com
$3.99
A single woman in New York is consumed by the bookshop where she works and the intellectual community that swirls around it. But her grandmother isn’t exactly satisfied with this lifestyle for her granddaughter, so she enlists the services of a Jewish matchmaker. Enter: a potential suitor, who is a working-class Jewish pickle vendor, vying for her attention against another suitor, who is decidedly not those things.
amazon.com - 15/16
14) A Serious Man
amazon.com
$3.99
If you are a fan of the Coen brothers’ style of filmmaking, here’s your dark Hanukkah movie. It focuses on a Jewish physics lecturer in Minnesota in the ‘60s; he is a very serious man. He’s also in the midst of a tangle of utterly messed-up life circumstances, and seeks advice from rabbis to help steer him.
amazon.com - 16/16
15) Holiday Date
Oops, this Hallmark Channel Hanukkah movie is kind of about Christmas. But suspend your disbelief and enjoy: A woman gets dumped right before Christmas and enlists an actor to play her boyfriend for the holidays. But he turns out to be Jewish, which isn’t exactly what her family was expecting.
Hallmark
