K-SCORE: 15
Director: Bob Clark
Writer: Jean Shepherd, Leigh Brown
Starring: Peter Billingsley, Jean Shepherd, Ian Petrella, Melinda Dillon, Darren McGavin
Spoiler Level: Impossible
Somehow this Christmas classic missed me despite being a lover of the holiday and growing up in Cleveland. It predates me by five years, so that might be something, but then again so does Return of the Jedi and that film did not pass me by. But, having purchased a house only a few blocks from the one they used to film this movie, which has since been turned into a shrine and local landmark, my brother and I felt we had to watch it.
It sucks.
…
Need more? There’s no story to speak of apart from the tiny conflict that the protagonist Ralphie wants a BB gun for Christmas. 90% of the scenes aren’t even related to his pursuit of that goal. It’s not particularly funny or particularly charming. The narration wanders and would have you believe that Ralphie eventually develops a curse whereby a thesaurus constantly scrolls on the inside of his eyelids. A Christmas Story is the kind of movie that is meant to be loved, but not analyzed. It’s meant to be on, but not watched. No one part relates to any other part too strongly, and all of it is designed to make a viewer of a certain age and upbringing go, “Yeah! I remember that… kind of.” Made in the eighties for people from the forties, it’s old and irrelevant. Those who wrote it are dead as is the director. I’d make some snide comment about how their ideas are dead with them, if the film had any ideas contained within it. It’s a smattering of nonsense set around Christmas time and it makes me feel nothing.
But if you’re the kind of person who loves this movie I doubt you’re going to be the kind of person affected by my review of it. It is enough that it exists, I guess, so keep throwing it on your living room TV while you’re wrapping your presents and hanging your stockings, every once and a while looking over and going, “Awwwwwww! This is the part where Ralphie beats the ever-loving shit out of a kid with a slightly annoying laugh.”