It's the 1940s, in Hohman, Indiana, and little Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley) has a nice life. But it's not quite wrapped with a bow, since Christmas is here and the one present he's not getting is the only one he wants: a brand-new, Red Ryder BB Gun. His mother (Melinda Dillon) is overworked and his father (Darren McGavin) is a curmudgeon, his only other company at home being his weird younger brother Randy (Ian Petrella). At school he can literally only dream of earning good grades, because his teacher Miss Shields (Tedde Moore) is kinda bitchy. Her and Ralphie's parents (who are understandably uneasy about buying him a gun, particularly his mother) stand like brick walls in his way of acquiring his treasured weapon, and so he hatches a plan to get it for himself. But that won't be so easy, as even Santa Claus warns him "You'll shoot your eye out, kid!"
An adaptation of Jean Shepherd's semi-fictional book In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, A Christmas Story was only a very minor hit upon its release in 1983 but has become a genuine cult festive classic in the decades since, and despite having just now seen it for the first time ever as an adult, I can see why. Co-writer and director Bob Clark, who'd previously made the original Black Christmas (1974) and Porky's (1981), forms Shepherd's vignettes into a holiday tale that works well as both an adequately sentimental satire of Christmas commercialism and a loving reflection on family and suburbia in a bygone era. Shepherd himself provides adult Ralphie's narration, which very lucidly and amusingly emphasises how our perspectives change as we grow.
An adaptation of Jean Shepherd's semi-fictional book In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, A Christmas Story was only a very minor hit upon its release in 1983 but has become a genuine cult festive classic in the decades since, and despite having just now seen it for the first time ever as an adult, I can see why. Co-writer and director Bob Clark, who'd previously made the original Black Christmas (1974) and Porky's (1981), forms Shepherd's vignettes into a holiday tale that works well as both an adequately sentimental satire of Christmas commercialism and a loving reflection on family and suburbia in a bygone era. Shepherd himself provides adult Ralphie's narration, which very lucidly and amusingly emphasises how our perspectives change as we grow.
Clark also draws beautiful and funny turns from all his cast, especially McGavin and Moore (who reprised her role in 1994's My Summer Story), and his soundtrack choices (all carols) are suitably restrained yet familiar. Since 1997, US cable networks TBS and TNT have broadcast marathons of A Christmas Story consisting of twelve consecutive screenings over both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. While I don't know (at least yet) whether it's that great, it certainly still made me feel like I'd unwrapped a gem under my tree.
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