The REEL Addict 

By Souf Jalili 

It’s the festive season again, a time for celebration, family, presents and – of course – Christmas movie marathons on television. And what would the holidays be like without a healthy dose of family comedies and feel-good movies?  Everyone has a favourite movie that they just love cozying up with the family to watch for the umpteenth time and for me that movie is A CHRISTMAS STORY. 

Released in 1983, the timeless and semi-autobiographical story of a young boy’s quest for a Red Ryder BB gun was not well-received in theatres during its initial run but found new life on cable shortly thereafter. It has today become one of the season’s most beloved classics and is so inextricably linked with the festive season that it airs for 24 straight hours on Christmas! 

Directed by Bob Clark (PORKYS) and partly based on Jean Shepherd’s book ‘In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash’, the film is a period piece set in the1940s and depicts a series of vignettes about a 9 year old boy, Ralphie, in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The plot is simple- Ralphie spots the perfect Christmas gift in a storefront window; ‘an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle.’ He makes it his mission to receive the gun from Santa on Christmas Day and along the way he has to convince everyone from his parents and teachers to Santa himself that the BB gun is THE perfect Christmas gift and he will not shoot his eye out!  

Besides depicting Ralphie’s quest for the ‘holy grail of Christmas gifts’ the film is also a nostalgic and hilarious account of his family and friends, and all the anecdotes from run-ins with his younger brother Randy to brawls with a vicious neighbourhood bully and encounters with weird relatives are truly memorable and heart-warming. Throw in a brave ‘triple dog dare’ resulting in a ‘tongue-stuck-to-a-flagpole’ incident, a Christmas dinner disaster, elaborate fantasy sequences depicting Ralphie’s daydreams of defending the family home with a BB gun and the soapy consequences of slipping the dreaded ‘f-dash-dash-dash’ word and you have a funny, poignant and timeless Christmas classic, every bit deserving of all the veneration it receives from fans and cable channels. 

A CHRISTMAS  STORY is a film about all those gifts that we desperately wanted for Christmas and never thought we’d actually get. It’s about being a kid and looking back to remember a time when life was simple and our lives centered around our Christmas present. The film transports us back to the time when Christmas was the most important day of the year and deciding what we wanted from Santa was probably the most crucial decision of our lives. This nostalgic focus on the universalities of childhood and the cherished rituals of the holiday is what makes the film resonate with people of all ages and warrants repeated viewings. Being told entirely from the viewpoint of Ralphie, the film captures the innocence and naivety of a child who feverishly desires a toy and is convinced that he will get it if he plays all his cards right. In the process, it taps into the inner child within all of us. We have all wanted something really badly as a kid and have spent hours both obsessing over it and trying to persuade our parents of its importance and subsequently anticipating Christmas day and A CHRISMAS STORY captures that obsession, persuasion and anticipation in a very charming and humorous manner. 

The performances in the film deserve a special mention and they go a long way in making the film so memorable. Peter Billingsey perfectly combines youthful naivety and sly charm and delivers a heart-warming and effortless performance as Ralphie. We can all see a little bit of our childhood in Ralphie and never through the course of the film do we stop rooting for him. Also, Darren McGavin and Melinda Dillon play their parts perfectly as the parents (‘The Old Man’ and ‘Mother’) and the film has some very memorable supporting characters namely the local bully Scut Farkus, the uptight Ms. Shields and possibly the most cold-hearted and cranky department store Santa to ever grace the screen. 

A CHRISTMAS STORY touches my heart like no other film and this is because it reminds me so much of my own childhood.  I didn’t want a Red Ryder BB gun when I was young but I was just as overzealous as Ralphie in my incessant campaigning for the ‘perfect toy’, the bully at my school was just like Scut Farkus minus the yellow eyes, my punishment for accidentally swearing was just as ridiculous as the soap washing that Ralphie is subjected to and so on and so forth. Each of the anecdotes presented in the film can be related to and could have easily happened to any one of us and the ability to relate to Ralphie and his problems is what makes the film such a delight to watch over and over again. No other film captures the essence of the holidays whilst depicting childhood hopes, desires, obsessions and injustices in such a charming, funny and heart-felt manner. 

Extra tidbit; The house the movie was shot in is now not only a museum devoted to the film but also one of Cleveland’s most popular tourist destinations. www.achristmasstoryhouse.com