We’ve been there. You’re sitting around with your family and/or friends, bellies full of turkey, trying to decide how best to let all that delicious Thanksgiving food digest. You’ve got the television, of course, but what’s something you can put on that everyone will agree with? What could you watch that will keep everyone engaged, moods light, and that holiday spirit churning? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered.

We here at Collider have compiled a list of the best films to watch on Thanksgiving. Now, these aren’t all necessarily Thanksgiving-themed movies. We thought it best to put together a diverse library of films that are agreeable in nature—movies that everyone can enjoy, no matter their age or sensibility. Some of these will get you in that pre-Christmas holiday spirit, while some are just a seriously good time. All are, we think, solid picks to watch with your friends and family on Thanksgiving.

RELATED: The Best Children & Family Movies on Netflix Right Now

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

planes-trains-and-automobiles-steve-martin-neal-page-john-candy-del-griffith
Image Via Paramount Pictures

If you’re in the mood for something that’s a classic and holiday-appropriate, you can’t do much better than John Hughes’ brilliant and sneakily emotional road trip comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles. The film is anchored by a pair of brilliant performances by Steve Martin and John Candy as a mismatched duo who are forced to share a ride to Chicago from New York City in order to make it home in time for Thanksgiving. From stellar physical comedy to pitch-perfect chemistry to the emotional gut punch “I like me” scene, Planes, Trains and Automobiles is immensely satisfying from start to finish. – Adam Chitwood

National Treasure

l-intro-1602468370

A good Thanksgiving movie doesn’t necessarily have to be about family. You don’t need family values reflected back at you when you spend time with your relatives. A good Thanksgiving movie can just as easily be a film that plays in the background and pleasantly amuses you with well-made, inoffensive action while you digest the ungodly amount of food you just devoured.

National Treasure fits the bill perfectly. It will just come on TV (TNT, probably), Nicolas Cage will be trying to make sure that the secret treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence doesn’t fall into Sean Bean’s grubby mitts, and you will have a good time watching action-comedy antics unfold. Cage is playing it straight, Justin Bartha is top-notch as the comic relief, and it’s light fare for a weekday afternoon where you don’t have to worry about anything. – Matt Goldberg

Meet Me in St. Louis

Judy Garland as Ester Smith looking out a window and singing in Meet Me in St. Louis.
Image via Loew's, Inc.

Are you and yours more the musical type? Then spring for Vincente Minnelli’s 1944 musical Meet Me in St. Louis. The Judy Garland-fronted picture follows the adventures of an American family living in St. Louis at the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World’s Fair, and charts their story over the course of all four seasons with a significant pit stop at Christmas time. It’s wholesome fun that also has a bit of a bizarre edge to it—the young sister Tootie goes on an unhinged snowman-destroying rampage—and the songs are swell. While the movie itself isn’t holiday-specific, the central theme of family and the focus on the fall and winter seasons makes it an appropriate watch for Thanksgiving evening. – Adam Chitwood

Pieces of April

PiecesofApril

Sure, Thanksgiving's got historical and political context, but at the end of the day it's about bringing together family, friends, lovers, and loved ones for a day of feasting and reconnecting, and yes, probably arguing. Pieces of April is a movie that understands the power of seating all your loved ones around a single table, even if they make you crazy. The film stars Katie Holmes as April, a pierced and tatted young woman who decides to mend fences with her estranged, straight-laced family, and especially her terminally ill mother (Patricia Clarkson), by preparing and hosting a Thanksgiving dinner in her shitty Lower East Side Apartment. Already overwhelmed and wholly unprepared to chef up an entire feast on her own, things take a turn for the worse when April discovers her oven doesn't work and tries, with limited success, to find a neighbor willing to help.

What happens next is a string of frustration and desperation, including a hostage turkey, that makes Pieces of April the first movie to truly capture the high-stress culinary mania of the holiday. More impressively though, and despite a truncated ending, it captures the beautiful moment when you decide to put your differences aside, commune with your loved ones, and appreciate the fact that you have each other in spite of the fact that can sometimes feel like more of a burden than a blessing. It doesn't matter if your cranberries are homemade or straight out of the can as long as you're serving them to the people you love. – Haleigh Foutch

The Incredibles

The Incredibles
Image via Disney 

If you’re looking for something that skews a bit younger, Brad Bird’s stylish superhero film The Incredibles is fun for the whole family. Indeed, the theme of the movie is “family” so it’s certainly Thanksgiving-appropriate, but it’s also hilarious, gorgeous, and wonderfully entertaining. Plus, you get an impeccable Michael Giacchino score as a bonus and the movie serves as preparation for the upcoming sequel. The kids will be happy you chose a Pixar movie, and the adults will be entertained by Bird’s sophisticated humor. – Adam Chitwood

Hannah and Her Sisters

hannah-and-her-sisters
Image via Orion Pictures

Hannah and Her Sisters is a complex and intimate study of three sisters (Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey, and Dianne Weist) and the husbands, ex-husbands, and lovers in their life. Told over the course of two years bookended by Thanksgiving dinners, Hannah and her Sisters reveals the story through a series of interwoven vignettes that slowly pull together, forming a bigger picture as the lives of the characters intertwine, each scene informing those that surround it. The unconventional, almost literary structure allows the characters and relationships to develop gradually and naturally, exploring different forms of intimacy from the amorous to the familial.

The Thanksgiving holiday itself mostly serves as a framework and doesn't play a huge role in the film, but as Thanksgiving does best, it serves as a means to unite the whole big twisted family, drawing the distinct threads together as the movie opens and closes. The film's relaxed, jazzy feel makes it an ideal holiday watch, especially after that tryptophan kicks in. It's also just a fantastically performed character drama, and there's never a bad time to watch one of those. – Haleigh Foutch

The Rundown

Dwayne Johnson as Beck arguing with Seann William Scott as Travis Walker in The Rundown (2003)
Image via Universal Pictures

Sorry, Fast & Furious fans, but Dwayne Johnson still hasn’t done anything better than this 2003 action-comedy. He’s at the top of his game as Beck, a “retrieval expert” (aka bounty hunter) who just wants to open a restaurant, but has to do one last job to make enough money to put up the capital: pull the wayward archeologist Travis (Seann William Scott) out of the jungle and bring him back home. Throw in Christopher Walken as the heavy and trying to explain the concept of the tooth fairy to the local indigenous people, and the film is just full-blown brilliant at times. – Matt Goldberg

The Mummy (1999)

Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz staring in The Mummy

There was a time when we accepted Brendan Fraser as a viable leading action hero, and The Mummy shows why. He plays Richard 'Rick' O'Connell, a former soldier who agrees to help an expedition led by librarian Evelyn 'Evy' Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) to find the Mummy’s tomb and the riches therein. They eventually discover the tomb isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when you read from the Book of the Dead, and have to find a way to kill an unstoppable undead sorcerer.

Fraser is charming, affable, funny, and able to convincingly pull off the big screen heroics the action film requires. Maybe it’s because I’m not as deeply attached to the original Mummy that I find the remake so enjoyable, but Stephen Sommers did an outstanding job with the flick, and it continues to hold up as a fine piece of entertainment. It also gave Rachel Weisz her breakthrough role, so we should be thankful for that. – Matt Goldberg

Sing Street

Sing Street band filming a music video in Sing Street

If you’re looking for something new and/or a pure feel-good movie, you can’t go wrong with Sing Street. This 80s-set musical/coming-of-age story hails from Once and Begin Again filmmaker John Carney and follows a young Irish boy who starts a band in order to impress a girl. In writing their original musical, they cover the various trends of the decade—there are songs that sound like Duran Duran and there are songs that sound like The Cure. At heart, it’s a story about young love and discovering who you are while not shying away from the harsh realities of real life. The songs are genuinely great, the performances are incredible (especially from Lucy Boynton), and the ending is a humdinger. It's a crowd-pleaser in every sense of the word, and should help qualm some of the political squabbles from the dinner table. At least temporarily. – Adam Chitwood

Elf

elf-will-ferrell
Image via New Line Cinema

If your family is the type that already has the Christmas tree up and is ready to start celebrating the December holiday before the Thanksgiving leftovers are cold, Elf is a fine primer for the Christmas movie-watching season. Director Jon Favreau’s new classic has become a staple of the Christmas holiday, and its somewhat throwback tone, silliness, and of course Will Ferrell’s performance all coalesce to make it an incredibly fun and sweet watch for the entire family. Christmas mode: Engaged. – Adam Chitwood

The Wizard of Oz

The lion, Dorothy, the scarecrow, and the tin man on the yellow brick road in The Wizard Of Oz
Photo via MGM

This enduring classic is perfectly suited for the holiday season because Judy Garland’s adventures through Oz are essentially about being thankful for what and who you have. With colorful characters and an enchanting setting, The Wizard of Oz is a great film to draw everyone in as they meander past the TV. It truly caters to the whole family, with innocent fun and unforgettable antics, and the songs are cozy and inviting. It’s more than likely that you’ve seen this movie a few times already, but its timeless nature is enough to keep every generation thoroughly entertained. At one point, it was an annual CBS tradition to air The Wizard of Oz on Thanksgiving, a practice that dated back to 1956. - Bianca Sbrocchi

School of Rock

the-school-of-rock-jack-black-cast
Image via Paramount Pictures

Laughter burns calories, right? Well then forget an after-meal walk, try watching School of Rock instead. Dewey Finn (who is impeccably played by the hilarious Jack Black) is a disgraced ex-band member who steals a substitute teaching job from his stuffy roommate and teaches an even stuffier group of private school pre-teens how to really rock. This film is incredibly quotable and radiates pure joy. If you have some family members around the table that have gone down the same path as Joan Cusack and Sarah Silverman’s uptight characters, School of Rock might be the perfect cure for their "stick-it-to-the-man-neosis." And of course, there’s always going to be one uncle that reminds you of Jack Black. The movie has one of the most hardcore soundtracks of all time and ends with an iconic original song that has been stuck in my head since 2004. The holidays can be stressful! Black and company remind us that when we’re feeling too wound-up, the biggest favor we can do for ourselves is put on some tunes, or some films, that make us happy. - Bianca Sbrocchi

Back to the Future

Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown and Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly in Back to the Future
Image via Universal Pictures

Chances are you’ve been looking for a reason to re-watch this anyway. The fact of the matter is that Back to the Future is a crowd-pleaser. There’s an inexplicable comfort to slipping into an old favorite that you haven’t seen in a while, especially if you get to share that joy with loved ones. If the recent reunion between Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox left you feeling a little nostalgic, this Thanksgiving movie might be the perfect excuse to introduce Marty McFly and the Doc to a little cousin that hasn’t yet experienced the wonder of a time-traveling DeLorean. The great thing about Back to the Future is that it is a guaranteed mood booster. It reminds you to love the ones you’re with, just maybe not as much as Marty’s mom does. - Bianca Sbrocchi

The Bob’s Burgers Movie

bobs burgers the movie feature

If you’re a fan of the series, you know that Bob’s Burgers has some of the quirkiest, funniest Thanksgiving episodes year after year. Bob might be the most intense holiday chef on TV, and in this feature, he has to serve up burgers like never before. You will surely want to be along for the ride while he and the rest of the Belchers try to save their restaurant from being shut down for good. The shenanigans are in full effect during this delightful movie and even with a calamitous murder plot, it keeps the lighthearted laughs coming. Sure, their strength as a family is tested in some wacky scenarios, but the problems that they face together feel very grounded and real. This gives way to the loving and tender core of this comedy. Not only does every member of the family unite to save the day, but some incredibly loyal friends join in on the fun as well. The Bob’s Burgers Movie is a pleasant and dependable recent release to bring the family together. - Bianca Sbrocchi

Top Gun: Maverick

Tom Cruise as Maverick smiling and making a fist in Top Gun: Maverick.
Image via Paramount

The great thing about a little post-dinner helping of Top Gun: Maverick is that you are far less likely to fall asleep. This 2022 sequel is downright exhilarating from beginning to end. If you missed it in theaters, now is a great time to gather ‘round and get reacquainted with some returning characters such as Val Kilmer as Iceman, and of course, Tom Cruise as he grapples with his duty to train a new batch of pilots, one of which is the son of his late best friend, Goose (Anthony Edwards). As Maverick wrestles with his guilt and the ever-present threat of being grounded, the new pilots (including Glen Powell and Miles Teller) gear up for a very dangerous mission with little time to prepare.

With Maverick’s guidance, they come to realize that determination and skillful flying are not enough to accomplish this mission and make it out alive. Everyone soon learns that they have to put their egos aside and work as a team if they truly want to have each other’s backs with consequences this dire. Top Gun: Maverick is a fun way to cap off your evening, but I would recommend not sitting too close to the TV during the amazing flight sequences – we wouldn’t want you to get motion sickness on a full stomach. - Bianca Sbrocchi