‘Tis the season to spend time with your family. Or, if they’re getting on your nerves this year, to spend time with the many classic families who populate film history.
Family is one of the great social unifiers, since if people didn’t get together and raise kids, we wouldn’t have any societies to begin with. So filmmakers, like all the other storytellers, tend to gravitate towards stories about families. We can sympathize, we can agonize, we can thank God in heaven that our families are better, or pray to any deity that will listen that our family could be more like the on screen ideals set forth by Hollywood.
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And so we take stock today of the most iconic movie families in history, the ones that set the standard or became cautionary tales (or both). These are the movie families by which we judge our own broods, and which will probably live on as long as our own bloodlines… if not longer.
Happy holidays to you and yours, and to these families that keep us company all year long!
The 12 Most Iconic Movie Families
Top Photo: Warner Bros.
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
The 12 Most Iconic Movie Families
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The Addamses
From: The Addams Family and Addams Family Values
They may have got their start in a comic strip, and then a television series, but the motion picture version of Chas Addams' The Addams Family swiftly became an unlikely beacon of positive family values in the 1990s. They may have been strange, they may have been homicidal, but their relationships were based on love and passion and acceptance. Acceptance, that is, unless you were "normal." But after watching Barry Sonnenfeld's hilarious comedies, who would want to be that?
Photo: Paramount Pictures
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The Corleones
From: The Godfather Trilogy
Mario Puzo's bestselling novel inspired a trilogy of Oscar-winning films from director Francis Ford Coppola, and they remain some of the finest motion pictures ever produced. The saga of a family drawn into organized crime, sacrificing their souls while struggling - usually in vain - to care for one another is one of the great American tragedies.
Photo: Paramount Pictures
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The Cullens
From: The Twilight Saga
Love them or hate them, the blockbuster Twilight movies have made an indelible mark on popular culture. A big part of that is the unusual Cullen family, comprised of vampires who play at domesticity despite the fact that they are anything but conservative cookie cutters. Sure, they eschew human blood, but they have an undeniable dark side... when they're not playing storm baseball (or whatever that was).
Photo: Summit Entertainment
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The Griswolds
From: The Vacation Movies
Are the heroes of National Lampoon's beloved Vacation movies another of the great American tragedies? Maybe. The Griswolds exist in a state of perpetually stymied hope, as patriarch Clark (and later, his son Rusty) strives for the idyllic Americana experience and gets tortured at every possible turn. We laugh to keep from crying, but by God, we still laugh.
Photo: Warner Bros.
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The McFly's
From: The Back to the Future Trilogy
One of the most popular films in history is about a teenager who uses a time machine to help his parents hook up in high school. Oh, and his mom wants to hook up with him too. The Back to the Future films are totally surreal, but the paradox-prone McFly family make us love it. They are dorky, hopeless, flawed and fun.
Photo: Universal Pictures
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The Parkers
From: A Christmas Story
The holiday classic A Christmas Story wasn't a huge hit until it wound up in America's living room, where families like the Parkers were finally able to recognize the similarities between this Bob Clark classic and what was going on in their own homes. The nostalgic glow of sullied pre-teen Christmas wishes, the easily angered father, the ongoing fear of soap poisoning... who hasn't experienced a little something like that?
Photo: MGM
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The Parrs
From: The Incredibles
Being a parent is hard enough without having to give up a life of excitement and adventure in order to do it. The Parrs were superheroes before they were forced into retirement, and a mid-life crisis forces them back into their super suits - and into a closer relationship with their superpowered brood - in the Pixar classic The Incredibles. It's every family, and every family's fantasy, rolled into one.
Photo: Disney
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The Sawyers
From: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Series
Not every iconic movie family is wholesome, although the Sawyers probably think of themselves that way. The cannibal clan from the horrifying Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies lives in seclusion, kidnapping, torturing and ultimately ingesting any poor bastards that happen upon their household. But they also take great care of their grandfather and cherish their chili cook off trophies. How charming! Until they slice you open anyway...
Photo: Vortex
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The Skywalkers
From: The Star Wars Franchise
Sure, Luke and Leia made out a little, but... actually, let's just pretend that never happened. The family at the heart of the beloved Star Wars series is living out a tragic cycle of murder, betrayal, secrecy and mutilation, but we love them anyway and always find a new hope that they'll turn out well.
Photo: LucasFilm
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The Tenenbaums
From: The Royal Tenenbaums
Wes Anderson was inspired by the great families of literature to create The Royal Tenenbaums, a comic saga of a precocious family who - after years of neurotic estrangement - finally move back in together after their father, a gambling cad named Royal, reveals he has cancer. A great cast helps this hilarious film feel intimate and timeless.
Photo: Buena Vista Pictures
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The Torrances
From: The Shining
Another of the great tragic families. Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of the best-selling Stephen King novel move into the Overlook Hotel for the winter, only to fall prey to fear, abuse and mania. This is the destruction of the American family. This is pure terror.
Photo: Warner Bros.
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The Von Trapps
From: The Sound of Music
One of the most popular films ever produced, and still one of the most successful (adjust for inflation and it even outgrossed Titanic and Avatar). Robert Wise's musical epic The Sound of Music tells the story of the real life Von Trapp family, gifted singers who escaped the Nazi regime. Classic songs and a wholesome story of loved ones reconnecting (thanks to the efforts of a saintly nun) will make this movie endure for generations to come.
Photo: 20th Century Fox
