Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.PCS 1/10/84; site ahuta.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!hoxna!houxm!ahuta!ecl From: ecl@ahuta.UUCP (e.leeper) Newsgroups: net.movies Subject: Re: A Christmas Story Message-ID: <139@ahuta.UUCP> Date: Tue, 4-Dec-84 19:20:39 EST Article-I.D.: ahuta.139 Posted: Tue Dec 4 19:20:39 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 5-Dec-84 01:24:47 EST References: <1163@ihuxm.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ Lines: 54 REFERENCES: <1163@ihuxm.UUCP> (Recycled from last year:) A CHRISTMAS STORY Film review by Mark R. Leeper One of the most poignant disappointments of my life was to move to the New York area too late. By the time I got here Jean Shepherd had already left WOR radio. For years his program was played on WOR and syndicated around the country. Shepherd's humor is so American it makes apple pie seem like a Communist plot. Shep (as his fans call him) would sit in front of a microphone and tell the funniest stories imaginable about his youth in the Midwest. With a straight face he would invent stories of mythic proportion about his youth, his adolescence, or his Army years. After he left WOR the same stories were framed as prose and published in magazines like PLAYBOY, or went into one off several books. PBS has even adapted them into TV plays two or three times. A CHRISTMAS STORY is the first (and in all likelihood the last) full-blown Hollywood film based on Shepherd's works. Since Shepherd for years invented his stories to fit into an hour of radio, his books tend to be disconnected anecdotes, each a chapter in length. Shepherd insists on calling his books novels though they read much more like collections of short stories. The first of these "novels," IN GOD WE TRUST, ALL OTHERS PAY CASH, is the basis for A CHRISTMAS STORY. To make the film about Shepherd's 8-year-old alter ego Ralphie flow, the storylines of the book have been intertwined to occur nearly simultaneously. A CHRISTMAS STORY is a cluster of funny stories glued together by a somewhat less successful main storyline. That glue is sticky sweet and sentimentally maudlin like the 200th recounting of "The Night Before Christmas." The stories, however, are pure Shep and I think it has been literally years since I have laughed so hard at a comedy. Stories like the Red Ryder Rifle and the pop-art lamp are every bit as funny on the screen as when Shepherd told them on the radio, and the added visual elements are perfectly orchestrated. In one way the medium does work against the story, however. Shepherd's stories about when he was eight years old are usually told with Herculean mythic proportions. To see them dramatized with real eight-year-olds really does not work. Not that Peter Billingsly, who plays Ralphie, is not an excellent child actor, but even he cannot fill out the role that Shepherd created for him. Nor is Darren McGavin my idea of "the old man"; somehow he seems too articulate and educated. Melinda Dillion also seems a little more delicate and sensitive than the mother in the stories. These little quibbles aside, the film really deserves to be seen. I am really afraid that a PG-rated film with an eight-year-old as the main character may end up with only children for an audience. If so, it will be the adult audience's loss. (Evelyn C. Leeper for) Mark R. Leeper ...ihnp4!lznv!mrl