Lighten up, kids

Don't know if you remember it, but there's a scene in Gremlins where Phoebe Cates' character talks about why she hates Christmas, a tragic but grimly funny story. It comes as kind of a WTF moment, but I remember appreciating it on that level. That kind of weird left-field move bespeaks a confidence that big budget movies don't usually have. So I find it telling that the author of this little piece hates it so much. I suspect she's fallen under the fashionable view that everything in a story - be it a movie, a novel, or what have you - has to advance the plot. But while plot may be a big part of the story, it's not the whole story. If it were, why watch movies in the first place when you could save time by reading their synopses on Wikipedia?