The worst movie Jon Hamm has ever seen and why he still watches it every year
Jon Hamm is a great actor, but he’s also become a burgeoning film critic.
The transition between being a television actor and a movie star used to be quite challenging, given that there used to be much less crossover between the media. Audiences would get so used to seeing a particular actor on the small screen that they would feel less inclined to pay to see them in a movie theatre, even if they had been a fan of their work.
One man who pulled off that challenging endeavour is Hamm, who became synonymous with his all-time great performance as Don Draper on Mad Men, a show that most critics would agree is one of the best ever. Instead of taking a traditional approach to his film career in which he vied for leading man parts, he has transformed into a bit of a character actor, showing that he can do more than just emulate Draper’s charisma.
It’s a trajectory that has proven to be successful, as Hamm has managed to work with legends like Clint Eastwood, yet also earn scene-stealing villain roles in hits like The Town and Baby Driver, and given how popular he has become among brilliant directors, he has also begun to show how knowledgeable he is about cinematic history.
When asked about what films he had seen the most in his life, Hamm was quick to name Die Hard, the 1988 action classic that turned Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman into household names. It is worth rewatching because of how it set a template for the action genre going forward, but the actor said he’s seen it many times because it’s a tradition to watch during the winter season, playing into the contentious debate on whether Die Hard is or isn’t a Christmas film, where Hamm seems to indicate that he thinks that it qualifies.
The other Christmas film that he watches every year with his family isn’t necessarily a classic of the calibre of Die Hard, and it’s not even one that he considers to be very good, as he qualified it “a weird choice” while naming The Family Stone.
“I find that movie fascinating,” he said, “I think it’s an inexplicably weird movie. It’s got a rock-solid, jam-packed, stacked cast, but every time I watch it, I think, ‘this might be the worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life’.”
Hamm isn’t wrong; The Family Stone is a very unusual film that seems like a total disaster, yet somehow has become a yearly viewing ritual for many families celebrating Christmas. The film is about a young man played by Dermot Mulroney, who takes his obnoxious fiancée, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, home with him during the holidays, only to fall in love with her sister, portrayed by Claire Danes, while, ironically, his fiancée ends up falling for his brother, played by Luke Wilson.
As nonsensical as The Family Stone is, it has grown in resonance within the past year due to the passing of Diane Keaton, who played Mulroney’s character’s mother, where a major storyline in the film focuses on her character dying as a result of an illness, and getting to spend a holiday with her family one last time. This year will be the first Christmas since Keaton’s death, and The Family Stone might have now become a genuine weepie.
