CinemaSins Triple-Dog Dunks on A Christmas Story
CinemaSins, the YouTube channel that features a pedantic narrator character making anal-retentive critiques of movies, is wrapping up their holiday-movie coverage this year with a video titled "Everything Wrong With A Christmas Story." One of the most-requested holiday movies for the channel, A Christmas Story was a modest box office hit, but has become a holiday staple after years on home video and cable TV drove it into just about every living room in the English-speaking world. With a terrible direct-to-DVD sequel and a never-ending parade of merch in retail stores at the holidays, the movie is a bona fide pop culture phenomenon...so it's inevitable that it would eventually get the CinemaSins treatment.
Poking holes in faulty holiday-shopping logic and pointing out how much of this movie plays like a horror movie, CinemaSins has some fun with the movie that you almost definitely watched on TBS at one point. And if you haven't? Well, spoilers. Duh.
You can see the video below.
Throughout December, CinemaSins has been on fire. They took a look at The Santa Clause 2, which...well, while they usually do loving send-ups of movies, it was pretty clear they really didn't like that one. There was also a look at The Suicide Squad, which they did like. Except that one scene with Polka Dot Man's mom(s).
Given that CinemaSins's journey started with an "Everything Wrong With The Amazing Spider-Man" video, it seems inevitable that we'll get some kind of comment on Spider-Man: Far From Home at some point, which should also be a fun one. They seem to have touched on that just a little bit this weekend, with a tweet that said "Multiversing is the new rebooting."
The channel, which has launched an in-house podcast and innumerable spinoffs, also just launched The Captain's Pod, a podcast dedicated to Paramount+'s Picard series.
Based on the humorous writings of author Jean Shepherd, A Christmas Story follows the wintry exploits of youngster Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley), who spends most of his time dodging a bully (Zack Ward) and dreaming of his ideal Christmas gift, a "Red Ryder air rifle." Frequently at odds with his cranky dad (Darren McGavin) but comforted by his doting mother (Melinda Dillon), Ralphie struggles to make it to Christmas Day with his glasses and his hopes intact.