Cast:
Peter Billingsley (Ralph "Ralphie" Parker), Erinn Hayes (Sandy Parker), Julie Hagerty (Mrs. Parker), Scott Schwartz (Flick), R. D. Robb (Schwartz), Zack Ward (Officer Scut Farkus), Ian Petrella (Randy Parker), River Drosche (Mark Parker), and Julianna Layne (Julie Parker) Directed by Clay Kaytis.
Review:
I'm sure you already know this, but A Christmas Story (1983) was a modest success upon its release. It took 12 years to actually get the movie made. Sure, Bob Clark may not have got along all the way around with Jean Shepherd (a peddler-type of showman that deliberately fibbed about his upbringing, he once described his work as "anti-sentimental"), but there was a certain magic to it all in those series of vignettes that everyone and their mother have probably seen at least once around the holiday season. Far from just "“Dickens’s Christmas Carol as retold by Scrooge", there was a curious magic to it all that really could only be done once. Sure, Shepherd and Clark tried it again with My Summer Story (1994), but nobody cared enough to even find time to criticize the movie. But the nudge to talk about A Christmas Story has persisted. Hell, the house that was part of filming is now an actual Municipal Landmark of the good city of Cleveland (perhaps ironically, this film could not get access by the current owners of the building to scan the house and neighborhood for referencing). As late as 2017, people even tried making live versions of the damn movie. It should prove no surprise, then, that one would find themselves stumbling onto this movie. Peter Billingsley wanted to do a movie as both sequel and origin story for the original film, for which he co-wrote the story with Nick Schenk, who in turn co-wrote the screenplay with writer/director Clay Kaytis. You might wonder why I would make an exception to a movie that was released onto streaming on HBO Max by Warner Bros. Pictures. Well, it is easier to make fun of streaming (which I will call the stupidest way to release a movie imaginable) when one notices that this did in fact have a DVD release for all to see.
Admittedly, making a movie sequel nearly 40 years after the fact is a tough prospect. For better or worse, falling into a description of "endearing" is exactly how I would describe the whole experience of watching the movie. Sure, it probably would've made Jean Shepherd seethe in the clearest of ways, but it does manage to have enough energy to carry itself for a few laughs with a game cast to at least justify a look for 98 minutes. You get your little moments spent looking at footage from before, but it isn't peppered in one's face for too many "remember?" smirks. It all rides on Billingsley, who narrates the movie and takes up a good chunk of the general action (one wonders what has more "things that happen" and I would suppose it is this one, which involves a would-be writer and Christmas shopping). He pulls off the best performance because of his commitment to showing the face of a man having to pull ashore to familiar trappings where dreams and disappointments run hand in hand with each other while having his own family to try and deliver a worthy Christmas for this time around. Now he sees the strange perspectives of youth from the side of an adult, which is different when one thinks of a kid in the 1940s compared to, well, 1973. Hayes makes a suitable match on the side of ones with their own quirks and desires for a quality Christmas to seal a year up, (silly or otherwise). One sees things click best when Billingsley, Schwartz and Robb share the screen together in goofy energy that could only come from middle-aged folks engaged in trifling matters (but most of us are always wrapped in trifling matters, so chew on that). Hagerty captures some of the qualities originally played by Melinda Dillon (who passed away in early 2023), albeit on a much smaller scale. Drosche and Layne round it out with fairly ordinary performances (read: kid actors) that accompany a general feeling of people with varying levels of hang-ups; consider, however, the fact that one sees imagined sequences again from the character played by Billingsley and wonder how it looks when you are seeing them from a child as compared to a family man. Beyond the popping in of familiar sights (one might chuckle at a bully reforming so they can be a cop) is at least a sense of commitment in trying to rise above not quite Midwestern-trappings (okay the movie is set in Indiana but really, is one going to tell it apart from say, Hungary?). The sequence at Christmastime is probably the most the film has going for it in the warmth that arises from taking action in the usual drudgery of mundane living. In general, I went with the movie with pretty reasonable expectations (to expect something to suck is not a fun way to live) and the movie pretty much landed right where I thought it would. Call it silly, call it a mild follow-up, but one thing it most certainly is not is a movie lacking in commitment. It aims to fit neatly in the shoes of second glancing after one has already had their fill of a familiar story and rewards those who settle for a few chuckles and a fitting enough ending to make the circle complete in offbeat holiday times.
Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment