When HBO Max announced that it would launch A Christmas story Christmasthere was both a resigned shrug and genuine excitement. Of grade a perennial holiday favorite that plays for 24 hours straight every December would get a sequel decades later if the original star was willing enough to return. Why wouldn’t Warner Bros. Discovery go after those looks, those clicks, those subscribers? At a time when legacy sequels and holiday streaming options are a matter of expectation, it felt like the ultimate no-brainer.
The question that remained after the announcement is yes or no A Christmas story Christmas‘ play to build on the nostalgic appeal of Bob Clark’s 1983 classic would either succeed or not. It’s, if nothing else, a movie based on the very direct involvement of star Peter Billingsley, who produced the sequel and has a story credit, so there’s an air of instant legitimacy that other sequel attempts didn’t always have. It’s also, like the original film, a film rooted in deeply relatable Christmas themes, albeit more adult. The result is something that, while it never reaches the ineffable magic of Clark’s film, ends up in solidly entertaining, if a little disjointed, holiday territory. [Matthew Jackson]
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