There's a good reason there's never been a sequel to A Christmas Story. In short, any film you can play on a 24-hour loop doesn't need one.
Yes, we know there have been other movies over the years based on Jean Shepherd's childhood memories. What we're talking about is the decision not to sully the name of the perfect, frozen-in-time snow globe that is 1983's A Christmas Story by throwing together a cheap sequel simply because you could make money doing so.
Maybe the fact that we as Clevelanders can stop by and see the Tremont neighborhood home featured in the film, now preserved as a museum, makes us more protective of the movie's memory.
That may also be the reason we can't help but feel used — and we're talking Little Orphan Annie-secret-decoder-ring used, here — that Warner Bros. has released a direct-to-video movie called A Christmas Story 2.
We've only seen the two-minute trailer, but there's something too slick about the look of the movie. What's worse is that the new story, which is set five years after the original, appears to be a lot of recycled jokes (smoke belches out of a furnace grate, the Old Man totes around a good-as-new Leg Lamp) and recycled situations (the bunny suit is now a sailor suit, Ralphie covets a car rather than a Red Ryder BB gun).
Is no beloved memory from the original movie sacred? Could I even subject myself to sitting through this for 85 minutes?
I think I'd rather stick my tongue to a frozen flagpole.
