A Christmas Story (1983)
Retro Review #24: Could this be the best Christmas Dark Whimsy since Dickens?
A Christmas Story (1983) — Could this be the best Christmas Dark Whimsy since Dickens?
+ Feature film, 1h 33m
A+^
Family Suitability
+ ✅1️⃣ Mostly OK for teens and adults. (Grades 10+, ⚠️ Might be considered inappropriate for sensitive teens and adults.) | PGc
Alignment with Judeo-Christian Values
+ ❎2️⃣ Good/Moderately Favorable
+ Based on literature (short fiction collection) In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash (1966) ⭐ by Jean Shepherd ⭐
+ 3️⃣/9 movies in Parker Family Saga multiverse ⭐
+ 1️⃣/5 movies in Christmas Story multiverse ⭐
+ 1️⃣/2 films in Parker Family Saga film series ⭐
+ 1️⃣/2 movies in Christmas Story movie series ⭐
+ 1️⃣/2 films in Christmas Story film series ⭐
A Christmas Story (1983)
Grade: A+^ (20.0) / HOF: 90
EQ 👍A++ | 📖A+ 👥A+ 📽️A+ 🎼A+
DW 😎😎10.8 | 🌚10 🌝13
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R ☮️n/a ◀️n/a ▶️n/a 🛐n/a
A Christmas Story only made nine of the ten all-time best Christmas movie lists I checked recently. It’s just as well I didn’t pay attention to who made the selections for the list that snubbed this Christmas classic. (Looking back, that list only had 25 selections which is on the low end, and had a Christmas movie about lesbians as #1, so perhaps I should have removed it from my list of lists to begin with.)
In the nine lists that included A Christmas Story, five included rankings and it was ranked between #28 and #2 on those lists, deservedly making the Top Ten on three of the lists.
This film is based on the semi-fictional autobiographical stories told by radio humorist Jean Shepherd. He was later persuaded to write them down, with most of A Christmas Story being drawn from his book, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, a collection of short stories about his fictional childhood as part of the Parker family. Shepherd voices the narrator in this film, the grown-up Ralphie Parker, so we get the benefit of his real life personal connection to the story.
All of the actors in the cast from the stars to the extras play their parts perfectly, so kudos to producer/writer/director Bob Clark for finding a great cast and getting great performances out of them. This might be heresy to some people, but I think Peter Billingsley, as young Ralphie, gives a far superior performance to Macaulay Culkin, directed by Chris Columbus in Home Alone.
A Christmas Story is an absolute masterpiece of Dark Whimsy.
Now, it’s not at the very top of the Dark Scale. I mean, nobody actually dies! (Unless you count the Christmas dinner or the bad guys in Ralphie’s fantasies.) There is peril of death, though. “Daddy's going to kill Ralphie!” Peril of injury is ever present, whether from bullies, triple dog dares or soap poisoning. And then there are the recurrent perils, the peril of being maimed for life, combined with the peril of the death of a dream, all summed up in the Dark five-word sentence, “You'll shoot your eye out.”
As for the Whimsy scale, we’re over the top here. Whimsy certainly includes laughter and comedy, and I laugh out loud in new places with each viewing.
The key to understanding Whimsy, though, is that it goes beyond comedy. A work categorized as black comedy has similitaries to Dark Whimsy, and might be Dark Whimsy, but isn’t necessarily. Whimsy could be described as a magical, fanciful, laughter-filled and childlike approach to storytelling. Animated films have a childish edge, but even live action films can include cartoonish elements with bright colored costumes or theatrical sets.
So any film like this one told from the point of view of a child has a good Whimsy score to begin with. The comedy, Ralphie’s daydream fantasy sequences, magical Christmas music, wacky sound effects, and cartoonish elements throughout, all deliver massive Whimsy doses to viewers of A Christmas Story.
Is it the best Christmas Dark Whimsy since Dickens? Definitely. And A Christmas Story beats all the film adaptations of A Christmas Carol. we’ve seen so far, possibly falling short only to the original classic novella.
A Christmas Story also delivers big time nostalgia. Even though the setting is urban Indiana in the 1940s, most Americans can find something here that reminds them of their own childhood. The movie starts with a group of kids scoping out the new toys in a department store Christmas window display. We didn’t have that when I was a kid, but the Sears Christmas catalog (aka the Wish Book) served the same purpose. Like the Parker family we had a questionable furnace in the basement. Like Ralphie, I also had a younger brother named Randy, who sometimes acted in unexpected ways. Like Ralphie, I once got in big trouble at school, when I snapped and went ballistic on a child that had been tormenting me.
If you’ve already seen A Christmas Story, what memories does it remind you of? Let us know in the comments!
If you haven’t ever seen A Christmas Story, go watch it this Christmas season! Everyone has different tastes, but it’s hard for me to imagine that any of my readers would not enjoy this cinematic holiday triumph!
Onwards!
P.S. There are a surprising amount of other works based on Jean Shepherd’s stories. Two TV movies preceded A Christmas Story. Three TV movies, three theatrical films, a 2000 play and a 2007 stage musical came later. I’ve never seen either play performed in person, or read the scripts, but in 2023, I watched and graded all of the rest of the Parker Family Saga, either via my Vudu (now Fandango) account or on YouTube. Some are produced by different companies, so some stories show up in more than one place.
Keep an eye on The Realm Report where I will let you know when you can get details on those works and my recommendations as to which of those works fans of A Christmas Story should check out. Or if you can’t wait, do your own research. 🙂
+ last viewed (~5) 2025-12-12, HDX7, 1.85v, 1D
+ first viewed ~1985, sd3, 1.85vv, 1
+ Genre Line Goes Here
Family Suitability Detail
+ ✅1️⃣ Mostly OK for teens and adults. (Grades 10+, ⚠️ Might be considered inappropriate for sensitive teens and adults.) | PGc
+ 😡+2 😵💫+3 🤬+0^ 🤭+1 🫣+3
Judeo-Christian Values Detail
+ ❎2️⃣ Good/Moderately Favorable
+ ✝️ +4 ➕❤️❤️❤️🩸🩸🩸💜💜🩷🩷 ➖(🗿)🤬
+ ✡️ -1 ➕🌗😠 ➖(🗿)🤬🤬🖤
+ 🗽 +2 ➕🗽📜📜🇺🇸 ➖(🗿)
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Originally posted to text group 2024-12-13
Re-reviewed and updated 2025-12-13
Note from Rick Retro: This review was originally posted December 13, 2024 to a select group of friends and family via a text group. We have roughly five times as many subscribers in our community now, so I am working on formatting and uploading all those old reviews to Substack for all of you and future subscribers as well.
At that time, I had not completely developed my full review format, so I am also re-reviewing most of these works to match the format of my newer reviews. Since these posts were almost entirely holiday themed from a 2024 Christmas Tour, I am now uploading these reviews as part of a 2025 Christmas Tour, all intended to get my archives completed while giving new subscribers a chance to experience older reviews on a measured basis.
But if you’d rather just start from the original beginning, visit this post and follow the “Next (all sections) ➡️” links at the end of each post, until you arrive at this one, where that link will be dead, until I upload the next post from our text group archives 😉. When the next post is not yet available, there will be a link to the post that is “Next Available, skipping over text group posts not yet uploaded ➡️”
The first post to Substack after the current “Text Group Gaps” of posts I have not yet uploaded can be found here. From this post, following the “Next (all sections) ➡️” links will bring you all the way to the most current post.
This note will disappear when the next text group post is added, and this review takes its rightful spot in our archives. For now, I hope you enjoy this look into Christmas past!
Text Group Reaction:
J: 🩷