        |
A Christmas Story 1983/2003 TURNER ENTERTAINMENT, DIRECTED BY BOB CLARK Starring Darren McGavin, Peter Billingsley and Melinda Dillon One of the ultimate classics of every Christmas for me is without a doubt "A Christmas Story”. Sadly, up until a few years ago, I had only had access to a VHS copy. I never took much advantage of it, only watching it maybe once or twice per season. The past few years, I have had only a handful of chances to see the film on television. So you can imagine when I was searching for Christmas movies online, and I found a 2-disc 20th anniversary edition, I would add it to my classics library. A movie that everyone remembers synonymously with the phrase “You’ll shoot your eye out!”. Set amidst the backdrop of Indiana sometime in the 1950s, we find our main character in Ralphie. Ralphie is a kid just like every other, excited for the holidays and receiving mounds and mounds of presents on Christmas morning for seemingly no reason. In the mind of a child, what better day is there? But Ralphie isn’t greedy this year. In fact, he has his mind made up. He wants only one gift. Every child picks one present that takes precedence over the rest. The Christmas list to Santa could be a mile long, but there is always that one gift that can somehow change your life. That’s what Ralphie thought. All he wants for Christmas is a Red-Ryder BB gun. No tinker-toys. No games. When hopes fail from his parents, Ralphie seeks out anyone who can aid him in his quest for the gun. He plants Red-Ryder ads in his mothers magazines, writes a “What I Want for Christmas” composition for school, and even asks the department store Santa. Will someone give him what he so desperately wants for Christmas? Perhaps the only downfall to this movie, which doesn’t drag it down much at all, is: “what’s the moral?”. Maybe you know what it is. Maybe you don’t. I get a good message out of the story told here. Taken from the works of Jean Shepard, “A Christmas Story”, to me, is about greed. But in Ralphies case, I don’t find it to be like the greed that millionaires harbor, but that adolescent “want”. Its normal for any kid of his age to feel like he does. So just what was Jean Shepard trying to tell us? What do you think? Despite the nagging moral issue, I still find this movie to be one of the best holiday movies I own. I’m glad it’s the collector’s edition, with bonus material and all sorts of extras. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who shares in our enjoyment of Christmas movies, as this one will surely pass on the holiday spirit, for you and the entire family MOUNT CRUMPIT RATING: 4 / 5 |
|