Growing up, “A Christmas Story” directed by Bob Clark was always playing during the holiday season. As it is my mom’s favorite Christmas movie because of the nostalgia it brings, my family was extremely thrilled when we heard a sequel was coming out titled “A Christmas Story Christmas” directed by Clay Kaytis. However, this new Christmas movie did not quite fulfill our expectations, but still put us in the holiday spirit.

“A Christmas Story Christmas” takes place 33 years from the original movie and follows main character Ralphie Parker’s life as an adult living in Chicago with his own two children, Mark and Julie. Ralphie is left to organize Christmas for his family as his “Old Man” has recently passed away. He makes many mistakes but in the end it all comes together and the family has a memorable Christmas. 

The movie brings back many characters from the original movie including childhood friends, Flick and Schwartz, and childhood bully, Scut Farkus. This brings up major feelings of nostalgia as most returning characters are played by the original actors. Also, the movie included all of the same music from the original during sentimental and pivoting moments. While these comforting holiday feelings caused memories and joy, the movie was so packed full of them it felt like while watching it, we were almost bombarded with the old movie with no room for interesting plot. 

The movie was only interesting because of the nostalgia packed in. If it didn’t include any of it, I would’ve disliked the sequel much more and I don’t believe the movie could’ve had a plot without it. It seemed like the movie was fueled by bringing back sets and characters. The plot had some comedic moments, but for the most part, it felt very forced and unnatural. With the continuous addition of random conflicts that didn’t really matter, for example the scene where Ralphie hits his daughter in the eye with the snowball, the movie was very slow-paced and as I said before, always fell back on nostalgia to make it semi-interesting. 

Another concept that confused and disappointed me about this Christmas movie was the way the characters barely showed any signs of sorrow and grief for the father passing away. The characters were written to be more worried about how Christmas was going to happen than being sad that such an interesting character in the original movie died. There was only one scene when I felt like they paid any respect to the character and the original actor, Darren McGavin’s, death.

Ultimately, the movie did a good job going down memory lane, but included unoriginal concepts a little too much. If you are looking for a short and cheesy Christmas movie to watch with your family, I would recommend it, however don’t have high hopes for the plot line and the charm “A Christmas Story” provides. 

To watch the trailer for “A Christmas Story Christmas,” click here.

On this blog, members of the Carmel High School chapter of the Quill and Scroll International Honorary Society for High School Journalists (and the occasional guest writer) produce curations of all facets of popular culture, from TV shows to music to novels to technology. We hope our readers always leave with something new to muse over. Click here to read more from MUSE.