A Christmas Story is a joy to watch any time of year.
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Just how close is "A Christmas Story" to reality? In 1955, when I was in the fifth grade, I wanted more than anything in the world a BB gun for Christmas. My father had no objections, but my mother was adamantly against it: "He'll shoot his eye out!" After a year of nagging and cajoling, I got a BB gun the Christmas of 1956, and although my eyesight today is poor, my eyeballs remain intact.
I don't know if BB guns are still popular among youngsters, but for anyone over a certain age, my experience appears to have been universal, making it the perfect focal point for this 1983 Christmas classic.
Understand, Christmas classics are hard to come by. Nothing tops "It's a Wonderful Life," of course, but several others are high on the list: "A Christmas Carol" (1951) and "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947), surely; and more recently "A Christmas Story" and "The Santa Clause." Several other contenders, like "Gremlins," "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," and the various Muppet adventures are either too dark, too vulgar, or too juvenile to attract a wide family audience. But of all of them, "A Christmas Story" may be the one that touches people closest to home. A Warner Bros. two-disc Special Edition DVD set is a fitting tribute to the movie's enduring appeal.
Based on the book of short stories "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash" by humorist Jean Shepard, who also narrates, the movie tells the story of one Christmas season in the life of a nine-year-old boy, Ralphie Parker, living in a midsized city in Indiana in the late 1940s. Everything that might happen to a nine-year-old boy around Christmas time is crammed affectionately into the story line, with the BB gun the centerpiece.
As Ralphie puts it, "The Red Ryder 200-shot, Range Model air rifle" was the "Holy Grail of Christmas gifts." But it was also the last thing a mother wanted her child to have. Yes, "You'll shot your eye out" was every Mom's stock reply to this gift request. So Ralphie has to scheme his mightiest to direct his parents' attention toward the matter and scheme even harder to persuade them to buy it for him. For instance, he subtly leaves a BB-gun advertisement tucked away in his mother's copy of "Life" magazine, where she is sure to find it and immediately realize the gun's worth. Like most nine-year olds, Ralphie has a well-developed and ever-hopeful imagination.
The movie is made up of a series of short vignettes involving Ralphie and his family, Ralphie and his school friends, and Ralphie and his teacher. You'd think that among them there would be at least a few that didn't work, but, in fact, they're almost all of them equally appealing. Preparing to go to school in the winter in a new snow suit, Ralphie's little brother, Randy, is described as looking like he's going "deep-sea diving," his stiff garb rendering him unable to move his limbs. A triple-dog dare forces a friend, Flick, to place his tongue on a frozen flag pole, where it naturally gets stuck until the fire department comes to his rescue. Miss Shields, Ralphie's teacher, gives the class an assignment to write a paper on "What I want for Christmas," and Ralphie writes what he considers a Pulitzer Prize-winning paper about his BB gun. Dad wins a prize in one of the many contests he enters and wins the most god-awful lamp shaped in the form of a female leg, which he proudly insists upon displaying in the front window. The neighborhood bully, Scut Farkus, whose eyes Ralphie swears are yellow, terrorizes the kids on the way to and from school. Ralphie lets slip the Queen Mother of dirty words, the dreaded "F-word," and gets his mouth washed out with soap. The buying of the Christmas tree, the Little Oprhan Annie secret-decoder ring, the department-store visit to Santa, the Christmas socks you never wanted, everything a person might remember from his or her own childhood holiday season is represented.
Moreover, the cast is dead-on perfect in their roles, adding to our acceptance and enjoyment of the stories. Ralphie is played by Peter Billingsley, who is not only cute and cuddly but the very picture of youthful innocence. Mom and Dad are played by Melinda Dillon, patient and long-suffering, and Darren McGavin, whose outbursts of invective are legendary and hilarious. Randy and Flick are played by Ian Petrella and Scott Schwartz respectively, both of them looking and behaving like every kid everywhere. The bully, Scut Farkus, is played by Zack Ward as the fellow we've all met and hoped for a comeuppance. And it's all brought together by the warm and knowing narration of the author himself, Jean Shepard, as an adult Ralphie.
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