Ever notice how nostalgia seems to play a vital role in the holiday season?
You carefully resurrect old family traditions, dig out grandma’s grease-spattered recipes, bedeck your tree with 50-year-old ornaments, and your teenage kids — normally devoted to trendy new music — happily subject themselves to Sinatra, Burl Ives, Andy Williams and Vince Guaraldi; it’s their soundtrack of Christmases past, bringing joyful but mildly melancholy memories.
This sense of nostalgia is the main reason the new “Christmas Story” sequel works. Indeed, that was also why the first film succeeded as well.
Released in 1983 but set in the 1940s, the original holiday sleeper has become a seasonal staple — to the point where TBS and TNT now run 24-hour marathons, with the beloved film showing over and over to impressive viewership.
Folks who love the first film with that obsessive zeal — a group that certainly includes me — are already raving about the sequel: “A Christmas Story Christmas,” now streaming on HBO.
It’s not that this enchanting follow-up is truly as great its truly great predecessor; but in carefully re-creating so much that we loved about the original, the sequel does just about everything right.
Nostalgia remains key, as “A Christmas Story Christmas” unfolds in 1973 — so Ralphie and his buds are all grown up; yet the era is still closer to the first film than it is to ours. For middle-agers like me, there’s a burst of fond memories in such touchstones as a well-thumbed Sears catalog, the hotly sought Easy Bake Oven and even sci-fi stalwarts Frank Herbert and Ray Bradbury — not to mention that appalling seventies décor and (gasp) those boxy, boring family sedans.
Better yet, “A Christmas Story Christmas” returns much of the original cast — instantly recognizable despite being nearly 40 years older. And the new movie likewise revels in voiceover narration, warm sepia tones, and Old English-style credits — also offering a host of visual references to the 1983 winner: the Chop Suey Palace, Flick’s aviator hat, the Bumpus hounds, Ralph’s rabbit sleeper, Dad’s fragile leg-lamp, the old-time radio and of course, Higbees store with its Santa Claus slide.
In addition to these engaging tributes, the film has original actors Peter Billingsley as Ralphie, Ian Petrella as kid brother Randy, R. D. Robb as Schwartz, Scott Schwartz as Flick, Zack Ward as bully Scut Farkas and even Yano Anaya as Farkas flunkie Grover Dill.
What it doesn’t have is Darren McGavin’s Old Man — or Jean Shepherd’s narrative voice.
McGavin, who died in 2006, had played Ralph’s unforgettable father, who dies at the beginning of the sequel — necessitating a holiday trip back to the Indiana homestead for Ralph and family. (Veteran character actress Julie Hagerty replaces Melinda Dillon, who played Mom in the first film and is today perhaps too old for the role.)
And as for Shepherd — who is also now gone — he not only wrote the book-basis for the first film, but he also voiced Ralph’s inimitable narration. The new movie — co-scripted by Billingsley — badly misses Shepherd’s distinctive voice, both in his actual language and in its priceless verbal delivery.
Fortunately, Billingsley and team have greatly deepened the emotional resonance, with a series of touching final scenes of surprising poignancy and power. The business with Farkas — who (along with Robb) looks exactly the same as he did 40 years ago — is especially well done.
I don’t see anyone running a 24-hour marathon of this sequel; but I bet most “Christmas Story” junkies will want to watch it more than once.
I sure do.
