I should have known that paying any attention whatsoever to AOL’s ‘Top 25 Christmas Films of All Time’ list would be a bad idea, but I was feeling festive and so when I saw A Christmas Story at number one, I thought ‘I’ve never seen, nay heard of that film, I shall endeavour to keep an eye when I next visit HMV’. And I then went to HMV especially. And there was one copy left, and it was like fate was twinkling its beady eyes over me.
Mostly I spent the whole time trying to figure out where I knew the mum from (Bigfoot and the Hendersons), and also why AOL felt it was the Greatest Christmas Film Ever. It’s all right. With its narrator element, it feels like a feature-length episode of The Wonder Years, set twenty years earlier. It has funny moments, and touching moments (the Christmas morning scene, where Ralphie opens his final present), and a couple of those heart-warmingly racist moments where it’s ok because it’s an eighties film set in the past and they could get away with it then, bless. Ralphie looks like the Milky Bar Kid, which is kind of cute.
I think the word I’m looking for is mediocre. It’s like blancmange, where Scrooged (which incidentally was number four on AOL’s list) is like banoffi pie. It belongs on Channel 5 on a Sunday afternoon, so you can nap and not feel bad.
Fact
The actor who plays Ralphie, Peter Billingsley, played an elf in Elf.
Rating: 
