A Christmas Story Christmas

Ralphie is grown up now, married with two children, and has tried and failed to make it as a writer. After his father's death he takes his family back to the house of his childhood on Cleveland Street and sets out to produce a perfect Christmas for everyone. The film is not interested in nostalgia. It is interested in a role being handed over: he now has to do the things his father did, and he cannot manage it. While repeating the jokes of the 1983 original, it looks at them from the parent's side. The form is faithful to the first film: voice-over narration, fantasy sequences, period design. This time the period is the early eighties. The most striking thing about the production is continuity of casting: Peter Billingsley, who played Ralphie in 1983, returns in the same role and is one of the producers; Ian Petrella, who played his brother Randy, and several of the neighbourhood children came back too. Clay Kaytis directed. Erinn Hayes and Julie Hagerty are in the cast. Who it is for: people who love the original and want to go back to that world, and anyone after a Christmas film. Who it is not for: viewers who do not know the original. The film runs almost entirely on remembering and has no story that stands on its own.