A Christmas Story Christmas

I recently watched  A Christmas Story Christmas on DVD, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

This movie is a sequel conceived as a homage to A Christmas Story from 1983 and shown repeatedly in Christmas holiday marathons on some cable channels. The first movie is in some sense a movie about nothing: the plot is about a little boy ("Ralphie"), still young enough to believe in Santa, who wants a BB gun for Christmas. And yet it is about so much more. Jean Shepherd's narrator as the adult Ralphie looking back on his childhood captures childhood wonder, evokes nostalgia, and celebrates Christmas.  

If you love the original, you will probably enjoy this sequel. Conversely, if you don't care for the 1983 original, skip the 2022 version. The 2022 film rhymes repeatedly with the original: most of the child actors in the 1983 film play themselves as adults in 2022. Most of the action takes place in the fictional Hohman, IN (a lightly fictionalized version of Gary). We again see Santa in Higbee's. We see and hear the Bumpus hounds. Much of the music from the original returns. The adult Ralph narrates. The same types of scene transitions occur. The original house returns with most of the same furnishings -- even the shade from the leg lamp. Many events from the original find similar events in this sequel: we see again haggling over the price of a Christmas tree, childhood bullying, snowball fights, fuses blow, car troubles, and so on. Camera shots from the original are repeated such as a drawer filled with junk (originally the teacher's, but now a  publisher's). 

But a few things are changed. Scut Farkus grew up to be a nice man.  The Old Man is dead, and Ralphie's mother is played by a different actress. The plot is about Ralphie wanting to become a successful writer.

Events inevitably build towards a happy ending and I won't bore you with those details. If the original film is not among your holiday viewing favorites, this sequel is going to make you say, "Meh." And inversely: if you love the original, I think you'll like this one too.

Now for a spoiler: in the original book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd, we learn that Schwartz died in World War II. Since this occurs after the events in the movie, we don't know about it when we watch the TNT marathon. But a number of years ago, I tracked down the book and read it. A little throw away comment on the last page of the book hit me like a punch in the gut. In this movie, I was surprised to see Schwartz alive in Flick's bar. Somehow this different version diminishes the written fictional narrative. I don't find myself crying over the loss of childhood and the waste of war.