A christmas story (1983) review

A Christmas Story, a review

An older yarn without any yawns as we get taken back to the wonder years shows sense without sentimentality, and refreshingly we’re a rough-hewn heart on its sleeve.

I am an off-peak guy, and I don’t do Christmas. I mean, we do Christmas, I stuff my face, and we have a tree in the garage I have fought with for the past six years from Wilkos. The main issue is waiting until dad is asleep for me to build it. But I need to get to the point of becoming a grown-up. It’s a lot of admin, and I’m a simple guy. Combine This with being a peak guy. Crowds, weekends, wildly where kids are involved, I swerve like a trolley in a shop’s closing down sale. It’s a lot of admin, and I’m a simple guy. Combine This with being a peak guy.

But having a Sunday Christmas film turned out to be the best surprise. Even when it turned out. Being an old film would be the mature crowd. Was full of parents and little ones that filled me with dread.

The film is reasonably well-paced. In one boy, Ralphie’s plight is given breath from the narration of his adult self. A blue-collar family with the Groucho, the nervous mum, and my fave, Ralph’s little brother. Who spends Most of The film wrapped in all The coats and falling over…. Pretty much my 7-11 without The e Mazi Ng hair I had

It’s a series of earthy vignettes from a boy’s eye view, with comedy at every turn. From schoolyard bullies looking to attack Ralphie and his friends. The home life disputes as his father win an award in the form of a salacious leg of lamb. It all layers and intersects to make classic sitcom situations that have laid the value print to so much since. In the lead-up to Christmas, though, while his plan is rt the bb gun he always wanted, it is a slight hook to come back to when the film is unsure what to do with itself. In the lead-up to Christmas, the speed-uphill his plan is rt the bb gun he always wanted. It is a slight hook to come back to when the film is unsure what to do with itself.

Even Ralphie’s reveries and speed-up antics are more peanuts plus than south park lite. Still, there is a specific bite to the coming of age, The t Tu Th of orphan Annie decoder ring is such a downer for him… it’s kept my adult attention, and I was rooting through Th thru certainties.

It’s not one-sided, he gets away with bullying, and he gets bullied. The moments when you are a child and realise you are on your own in some stages of life are not avoided. And all. With an intelligent wit.

The families I saw it with kept quiet once the film started, and Then jokes hit parents at some points and children at another. Over the last two years, everyone has been learning to be outside again. I got to give credit to the kids at the screening. Only one shouted. I’m glad that’s done at the end. Prick.

Being a product of 1984 and, more relevant, being a 46-year-old so used to the terms as a child, I could not say I felt offended. Having said that, I see why jokes and comments about east Asian communities would derail the comfort of some viewers. Similarly, the meditation on which bar of soap is more pleasant to be punished with has a certain absurdity. Still, others may have a harder line on this form of corporal punishment than my childless self. Some tricks to grate with casual racism.
I would say, though, that the F-bomb is dropped and referred to without being expressed in the film, and that got most of the audience talking more than the soap; ” Daddy, what’s the word they mean”..oh please Maria, your seven we all fucking know you know to stop trolling in a screen you irritant.

But the film ultimately, although set in the ’40s, captured a family unit I was part of in the 80s—my dad’s fixation with the fuse box and electricals at the perpetual burning down of our house. My mother’s way of calm and control while fighting against a lack of status and recognition was all there.

My dad and I spent this afternoon looking forward to RK red cabbage, and I have the film behind me as I type this—the England game.

Have a biscuit. Pop it on and enjoy it with tea. You did chores. You deserve it.