by Robert Bouffard, Editor
A Christmas Story is probably my favorite Christmas movie of all time. I’ve seen it multiple times per year for basically my whole life, and the 24-hour loop on TBS is usually on in my house on Christmas morning. There’s of course no way that a sequel could ever live up to the original. Combine that with all the modern legacy sequels that come out and rely on the images of the original for their emotional payoff, and there was little hope for this to be any good.
So count me baffled to find that A Christmas Story Christmas doesn’t rely too heavily on the iconography from its 39-year-old predecessor, but it doesn’t tell a compelling enough original story, either.
Maybe it’s just a personal thing, but I don’t think you quite realize how much the original A Christmas Story depends on childhood innocence and the fascination with Christmas until you see a similar story through the lens of the same character — except this time he’s going through a midlife crisis. Ralphie, now going exclusively by Ralph (Peter Billingsley), is once again the main character, and I have to say, it’s much more difficult to invest in his character when he’s a 40-something man who wants to publish the next great American novel, instead of a kid who wants a BB gun for Christmas.
The main problem, though, is that the central conflict is murky at best. This is no Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation who just wants Christmas to go smoothly, or the aforementioned younger Ralphie, who wants an awesome Christmas gift. This time around, Ralph has to step in for his father (played in the original by Darren McGavin) to make this the best Christmas ever. Except, Ralph already loves Christmas. So there really isn’t an external conflict, and the internal one of living up to his dad is unconvincing.
Now, what I expected going into this was to see the leg lamp in the window, Randy (Ian Petrella) eating meatloaf, Ralph teaching his kid how to shoot the Red Rider BB gun, Flick getting his tongue stuck on the pole again, and things of that nature. So I do give them film, which was co-written by Billingsley himself, credit for not taking the easy road full of callbacks. But there’s just no real cohesion in its place. It basically hops from vignette to vignette to display the shenanigans this family gets into in the lead-up to Christmas.
And most disappointingly, it’s not a check-in on the Parker family as much as it is about Ralph’s drive to write a massive book. McGavin sadly passed away in 2006, so it makes sense to have his absence play a part in the plot, which is admittedly done well. But Melinda Dillon, who plays the mother in the ’83 version, retired from acting back in 2007, and she’s not back for the sequel. Julie Hagerty does a fine job in her place, but you’d almost wish that they’d written the character out as well, because the new actress just brings a different energy. And Randy is barely in the film — the family dynamic and Christmas spirit are the main reasons that I still love the original. It’s just sad that the sequel is lacking in that department.
A Christmas Story Christmas has good moments here and there — some comedic moments work well enough, and the emotion does genuinely play when it needs to — but the best moments in this one don’t even compare to the worst moments in the original (racist caricatures excepted…). It uses dream sequences and narration because the first one does, and not because this particular script calls for them, and it’s unfortunately clearly apparent why Billingsley hasn’t acted much since he was a child. But thankfully, we’ll always have the original.
Score: 5/10
A Christmas Story Christmas is currently streaming on HBO Max
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