Airing for days at a time during the holidays, it’s a shocker that I’ve never seen “A Christmas Story” all the way through. Naturally, I’ve seen bits and pieces—a tongue frozen to a pole here, a leg-lamp there. But I did not grow up with this film as a part of our Christmas-tradition rotation and so can’t say I even knew what it was about. Ends up, that was probably ok. Trigger warning if this film is special to you: This movie is lame.
“A Christmas Story” is a movie about Ralph Parker and his singular goal of getting a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle for Christmas. As all of the adult, authority-figure characters around him are concerned he’ll “shoot [his] eye out”, a bit of clever strategy is required on Ralphie’s part to ask for the gift in just the right way. The story is buttressed by a bunch of other anecdotes of Christmastime in the ‘40s: a friend getting his tongue stuck to a pole, living with the neighborhood bullies, getting punished for cursing, dad fighting with the furnace, mom fighting with dad over a leg-lamp, etc. And that’s about it.
The whole thing is basically “Nostalgia, The Movie”. Which I guess works if you have nostalgia for the 40’s OR if you grew up watching the film and are nostalgic for it. As I fit into neither camp, I found the film to be boring. Like the “Goonies” or other overrated ‘it’s fun because the kids yell and curse’ stories, I could not deal with how whiney everyone was. The plot wasn’t that interesting and the extra anecdotes were about as organized and purposeful as an episode of “Family Guy”.
I suppose the film does a good job of capturing what it was like to be a kid want a specific present. My one chuckle was between the tossing aside of gifted socks and having to wear the bunny suit on Christmas morning—every kid I grew up with remembers getting things he/she didn’t want or having to pretend to like something for another family member. Hell, I probably still do it. But that fun Christmas morning sequence wasn’t enough to save this rose-colored, uninteresting story. If I want to see an adult-narrated nostalgia fest for a time that didn't really exist, I'll put on "The Sandlot."