A Christmas Story (1983)

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

This used to be my favorite Christmas movie but over the years it's just really lost its appeal. The old man has always been the best part. Especially when he's off camera fighting the furnace.

I have watched it every Christmas and will continue to do so for the rest of my life.

A Christmas Story has become a festive classic in North America with a lot of subsequent films trying to replicate its success.It follows the nostalgic tinged tale of young Ralphie (as told by his adult self) a schoolboy in 1940s America who wants a BB gun for Christmas which his mum tells him will shoot his eye out. We see Ralphie getting up to pranks with his fellow classmates, being bullied by a rough kid, going to see Santa at the department store and of course his life with his parents and younger brother with tales of his dad winning a prize of a stockinged leg which he uses as a lamp.Darren McGavin looks too old to be their dad. Peter Billingsley brings a lot of charm as the precocious bespectacled Ralphie for whom life never quite turns out as he imagined in his head such as trying to lay hints of what he would like for Christmas.It is whimsical and fun but I would not call it a Christmas classic.

When I saw A Christmas Story repeatedly described as the 'best Christmas film ever', I knew I'd be invariably disappointed. This sweet and sentimental story is a family-focused tale about a young boy growing up in the 1940s and desperate for a toy gun for Christmas. Yep, the usual American preoccupation with commercialism, and not a patch on the likes of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.It is, however, the sort of film that kids would love, given that it charts children getting up to repeated mischief in much the same way as Richmal Crompton's JUST WILLIAM books. I can imagine that it's the type of film that people would watch themselves as a kid in the 1980s and grow up loving it with a fuzzy feeling of nostalgic warmth, which is fair enough.The twist about A Christmas Story is that it's actually a Canadian film, directed by the one and only Bob Clark, whose Black Christmas is one of the ultimate Christmas horror films ever made. As for this film, it's watchable and fitfully amusing, featuring the usual pratfalls and scenes of kids getting their tongues stuck to frozen poles. The main character is a bit annoying although not as much as I'd feared and old-timer Darren McGavin helps to anchor things as his dad. Indeed, I found it entertaining enough, just not the classic I'd read about.