Movie Review: A Christmas Story Christmas
What We Liked
What We Didn't Like
You could be forgiven for thinking A Christmas Story Christmas is nothing more than a streaming service’s attempt to trade on nostalgia and pad out its offerings. Even its lazy title suggests that it exists solely so HBO Max can give viewers an easy piece of content to click over to after watching Bob Clark’s 1983 original A Christmas Story.
But in a minor Christmas miracle, Clay Kaytis’ sequel is a little more than a quick, cheap cash-in. While it’s not going to take its predecessor’s place on the holiday movie throne anytime soon, A Christmas Story Christmas has its own charms and a sweet spirit that makes it a welcome return to Cleveland Street.
Peter Billingsley returns as Ralphie Parker, now a 40-something adult living in Chicago with his wife, Sandy (Erinn Hayes), and their two kids. No longer a bright-eyed young kid dreaming of a Red Ryder BB gun, Ralphie is coming to the end of a year he’s spent trying to sell his first novel. When his mother (Julie Haggerty) calls with news that Ralphie’s Old Man has passed, Ralphie takes the family back to Hammond, Indiana, to try and give them a holiday to remember.
The original A Christmas Story works because of how perfectly it depicts the way wonder, greed, and terror commingle in a child’s mind during the holidays. It presents Santa as a terrifying presence, constantly treats Ralphie’s thwarted schemes as world-ending pitfalls, and contains just as many scenes of kids crying as it does of them reveling in Christmas excess. It’s funny because of the ways it acknowledges the wonder, frustration and absurdity of the season.
A Christmas Story Christmas wisely doesn’t attempt to re-establish that childlike view, and works best when it acknowledges the bittersweet nature of Christmas as a grown-up. It’s often funniest when exploring the difficulties of being a parent at Christmastime, and it benefits from earnestness as it focuses on Ralphie processing his father’s passing or wrestling with the memories of Christmas past that compete with his own current yuletide attempts. While it isn’t above using soundbites or flashbacks from the first film, if ever there’s a genre that can be forgiven for indulging a bit of nostalgia, it’s the Christmas movie. The screenplay by Nick Schenk and Kaytis attempts to recapture Shepherd’s folksy narration, and even if it doesn’t quite nail it, it provides a gentle humor and warm undercurrent.
Although A Christmas Story already has three sequels, this is the first in which Billingsley returns as Ralphie, and he slips back into the spectacles nicely. Billingsley keeps Ralphie’s flights of fancy and constant façade of optimism, but he’s also funny at capturing the quiet panic and desperation that exists just under the surface. Billingsley ably recreates the looks of distracted joy or confusion that he pulled off so well in the original, but he also conveys the sense that this Ralphie is a man with his own years of experience, and never treats him as being caught in suspended adolescence. Billingsley acquits himself nicely in the quieter moments, and his voice actually sounds close enough to Shepherd’s that the new narration is never jarring.
Kaytis, who helmed The Christmas Chronicles, largely captures the warm, nostalgic tone of the original, although his attempts to recreate its best-known comedic beats are hit and miss. A sequence where Ralphie tries to bargain for a Christmas tree just like his father is a whiff, but there are just as many moments where the film puts enough of a twist on the familiar to keep it fresh. A visit to a mall Santa doesn’t devolve into terror as in the first, but instead is centered around Ralphie’s superhuman Christmas shopping abilities. A roadside mishap wisely avoids any mentions of fudge and instead turns into a charming family snowball fight. The film can’t avoid doing another “Triple Dog Dare” between Ralphie’s buddies Flick and Schwartz, and the over-the-top sledding ramp that follows is, predictably, not nearly as memorable as the icy flagpole from the first film.
Peter Billingsley and Erinn Hayes in “A Christmas Story Christmas.” Photo by Yana BLAJEVA – © Yana BLAJEVA.
Where possible, the film trots out familiar faces, even if it might have been tempting to recast the former child roles with more established cameos. Schwartz (R.D. Robb) and Flick (Scott Schwartz) now hang out at the local tavern — which Flick owns and where Schwartz runs up an immense tab — and if Robb and Schwartz aren’t exactly the most polished actors, they fall back into their playful antagonism quite easily. A late-film encounter with Ralphie’s former bully Scut Farkis is almost jarring in how much actor Zak Ward can summon the intimidating personality of the yellow-eyed bully, but it takes an unexpected and sweet turn.
The new additions are a mixed bag. Haggerty has the unenviable task of stepping in for Melinda Dillon, but she’s a highlight, particularly in a very funny encounter with some Christmas carolers or in the way she reveals her Midwestern passive-aggressiveness during a game of Scrabble. Haggerty easily acclimates to the franchise’s very particular tone and texture, while also doing some tender work late in the film. Less successful is Hayes, who cannot escape presenting Sandy as a sitcom wife equipped with an arsenal of quips and eye rolls, and comes across as too modern for the period setting. And while it might seem odd for a sequel to A Christmas Story to put the kids mostly in the background, that’s actually wise here. It’s nothing against the young actors tasked with playing Ralphie’s kids, but the child characters are too cloying and cute, a constant reminder that A Christmas Story stood alone in presenting a genuine look at childhood (although it should be noted that Davis Murphy is solidly funny as the Parkers’ hillbilly neighbor).
A Christmas Story Christmas can’t quite escape the legacy-sequel trap. It too often holds the original film up as sacred text, and its attempts to recreate its predecessor’s most famous beats fall flat. But when it’s not looking back, it’s a sweet and gently funny look at growing older, building on family traditions and trying to navigate the craziest time of the year. It also serves as a loving tribute to Darren McGavin, who played the Old Man in the original, and to Shepherd, whose words created a world that was hyper-specific and yet recognizable to almost anyone. No, this won’t end up playing for 24 hours on Christmas Day; but, maybe switch it on at the end of that marathon for a warm and enjoyable holiday reunion.
