Year: 1983
Rated: PG for momentary language
Staring: Melinda Dillon, Darren McGavin, Peter Billingsley
Maybe you’ve seen Sprint’s latest holiday commercial- a blond, bespectacled boy first asks his mother for a new cell phone, then asks Santa (gets pushed down a slide) and ends up getting the phone of his dreams while hideously dressed in a pink bunny outfit. If you don’t know the movie this commercial pays homage to, you are missing out on one of the holiday’s greatest films.
“A Christmas Story” is based on Gene Shepard’s novel of the same name and is narrated by him in a warm, gravelly voice. It is the story of young Ralphie (Billingsley), who desperately wants a “Red Ryder BB Gun with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time” but every time he asks for it or tells anyone about it, he gets the same answer “You’ll shoot your eye out!”
The wonderful thing about his movie is that it feels like you are watching a real family. The mother (Dillon) is slightly wacky, but in a good way. The father (McGavin) is a typical, gruff man with a penchant for a “leg” lamp (you just have to see it) and the younger brother, Randy, is a typical younger brother…though he has some of the funniest lines and scenes. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is where the mother is trying to get Randy to eat his meatloaf for dinner. Randy keeps repeating “Meatloaf, smeatloaf, double beat-loaf…I hate meatloaf.” So, his mother asks him to “show Mommy how a piggy eats.” So Randy shoves his face into his mashed potatoes, giggling and snorting like a pig. The reactions of the mom and dad are so realistic, they feel genuine and you can’t help but laugh along with them.
Ralphie doesn’t give up hope that he will receive the Red Ryder BB Gun for Christmas despite the protests of everyone he knows. The movie takes place between Thanksgiving and Christmas and is filled with several other hilarious scenes involving one boy who is triple-dog dared to stick his tongue to a flag pole (and does, but it gets frozen there), a couple involving the “Bumpass’s Dogs”, and one involving “THE word, the big one, the queen-mother of dirty words, the ‘F-dash-dash-dash’ word!”
“A Christmas Story” is great for nearly all ages, though does include one moment of language from the father (most “swearing” in the movie though is mumbled and completely unintelligible) as a result from a run in with the neighbor’s dogs that nearly ruins Christmas dinner. But it shouldn’t be too offensive and certainly won’t ruin the movie. You can see “A Christmas Story” for 24 hours straight on TBS starting Christmas Eve at 8:00 p.m. and find out if Ralphie ever gets his BB gun (and if he does shoot his eye out). It’s become a family tradition of ours, and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do.