This review was made possible due to an advance copy of A Christmas Story Christmas provided by Warner Bros. for review. A Christmas Story Christmas streams on HBO Max from November 17.
A Christmas Story Christmas follows Ralph Parker, 33 years after the 1983 holiday favorite film, A Christmas Story. Now he has a family of his own and after a huge loss, he’s determined to give them the best Christmas ever. However, it’s not as easy as it seems and everything that could go wrong, does. The film follows Ralph as he plans the holiday, while trying to make it as a published writer. We catch up with not only Ralph after 33 years but several other characters from A Christmas Story as well.
Star Rating
Nostalgia Bait At Best
I’m often suspicious of sequels that come out 10+ years (in this case, nearly 40 years) after the original but I’m always willing to give them a chance. As long as I can remember, ever year A Christmas Story played on our TV on Christmas during its 24-hour marathon. So when I heard that they were making a sequel, I was immediately interested. I had high expectations that they would match the tone of the original but unfortunately, those expectations were not met.
Half of the charm of A Christmas Story is the somewhat dark, adult humor that overlays the film. I was disappointed while watching A Christmas Story Christmas to find that they didn’t really attempt to duplicate that humor and tone. However, they did do a couple ‘imagination’ sequences, like in the original when Ralph imagined himself blind while his family cried or when his teacher fawned over his essay which I did like to see. They weren’t completely afraid to replicate some parts.
The callbacks were almost too obvious with Ralph coming across the bunny pajamas and the lampshade to the leg lamp in the attic, the hound dogs running around the neighborhood, a triple dog dare happening between an adult Schwartz and Flick. I wish the references would have been a little more subtle rather than being so blatant. It seemed that every time a memory was recalled, it was only from that 1940 Christmas, as if they had no other memories between 1941 and 1973.
Even though we may not have known what they were talking about, we would have understood that it happened sometime during their life that we didn’t get to see. Most of it was, “Hey, remember this thing from the first film?” which is why it felt like nothing but nostalgia bait to me and not that they wanted to make another classic Christmas film.
It was nice to see so many of the original actors return as adults, although I had been hoping to see a little more of Randy, Ralph’s younger brother, but I understand that they wanted to leave him out to make the responsibility of Christmas fall solely on Ralph’s shoulders. The presence of the original parents were very missed, with Melinda Dillon having retired from acting and Darren McGavin having passed away in 2006.
Ho! Ho! How Much Longer?
With A Christmas Story Christmas felt about 20 minutes too long with too many unnecessary scenes, but coincidentally, the last 20 minutes were my favorite of the entire film. Without getting into specifics, there was a scene involving a snowball fight and the consequences of that, which didn’t feel needed and it was only there for the feel-good moment in those last 20 minutes of the film. With that said, that aforementioned feel-good moment did exactly that for me. I’ll admit I am an emotional person to begin with, but I think the few shed tears were deserved.
I know that they wanted to fit as many references and callbacks as they could, but it bogged down the story too much. Some of the callbacks worked great and didn’t extend the runtime, such as the narrator, Joseph Al Ahmad, who does a great Jean Shepherd impression. They could have created something special without having to rely so much on A Christmas Story for it to work.
The best part of the film, as I said above, was found in the last 20 minutes. It felt like a love letter to the original, seeing the original characters together, and it gives us that nice, Christmas-y feeling that we want when watching a holiday film. While most of the story dragged, I was still happy to see it end on a high note.
Final Thoughts
A Christmas Story Christmas finds itself relying on nostalgia too much and not on its own story. Although it was nice to see Ralph become a somewhat stable adult, the film didn’t hit the right tone for me. I wish we could have seen a few more traits from his old man shine through in his parenting. Simply put, A Christmas Story Christmas had the potential to be better and do something different, but it feels like any old Christmas movie. With that said, you could still feel the love that they put into it, but it wasn’t enough to make it entertaining.
Check out the trailer for A Christmas Story Christmas below:
