Sampling Other Christmas Traditions

Many people have holiday movie traditions, a film they make a point of watching most every December. For many, that tradition is A Christmas Story (which one cable network helpfully indulges by running the film 24 hours straight on Christmas Eve). But even though I know all about the Red Ryder BB Gun, sticking your tongue to a frozen flagpole, the sexy/creepy leg lamp, and more, I had never actually seen the movie itself until this Christmas season. I found it to be a mostly entertaining experience, though I'm quite certain that you have to have seen it for the first time as a young child to have the strong adoration that I've heard many people proclaim over the years.

A Christmas Story is almost an anthology more than a single tale, an anthology of stories that just happen to feature the same characters. Now, one of my favorite movies (and favorite Christmas movie) is Love Actually, and that's very much a hodgepodge with a single theme, but not a single narrative. So while this aspect of A Christmas Story wasn't really a deal breaker for me, I did find myself wishing for a little bit more continuity in the story beyond the occasional return to the quest for a Red Ryder BB Gun.

Still, some of the stories in this mix were pretty entertaining. I thought the most successful moments were the fantasies in the mind of lead character Ralph, as the adults behaved in fun and over-the-top ways. The sight gags with his younger brother were also well executed (such as his piggish eating habits, and his bundling up for the cold by his mother).

What didn't work for me, in a nutshell, was the narrator. I gather the filmmakers felt they had to have the device of the old narrator reflecting on his childhood -- either to explain the period time setting, honor the anecdotes in the book on which the film is based, or both. But I found the voice-over to be intrusive and redundant. Rarely did he reveal anything that wasn't abundantly clear in the behavior of the characters on screen. Most of the time, the actors on camera are stuck holding awkward poses as they wait the required seconds for the narration to be inserted later.

Ultimately, though I can't quite imagine why a 24-hour marathon of this movie is necessary, I certainly found it better than many other traditional Christmas films that people go out of their way for each year. I'd give A Christmas Story a B-.