- Joined
- Jan 29, 2021
I mean...I have opinions on it...STRONG OPINIONS!I'm sure Bob will have opinions on this.
Mother of God, don't fucking tell me this is supposed to be my generation's A Christmas Story, my favorite Christmas movie of all time! They missed out on everything that made A Christmas Story a classic. Adding a framing device was a terrible decision, because if you're trying to get adults nostalgic enough to identify with the main kid the LAST thing you do is use a framing device. It takes the audiences out of the action because the characters do the emoting for the audience, when the audience is supposed to emote.
Second, the humor sucks. The funny parts aren't really funny and are just overexaggerated like Jim Carrey's comedy (except for the Vietnam line, but that's not through the writer's skill). It makes you laugh, but ultimately it's forgettable. What's your favorite Jim Carrey bit? Exactly. Now, I'll allow that was the point because it was probably meant to go along with the frame, but it all smacks of "lol so quirky" humor that has little basis in reality. Jean Shepard's magnum opus worked because what humor there was was grounded. Compare the mall scenes. In A Christmas Story, Ralphie becomes a victim of a few mall workers who have been dealing with bullshit in stupid outfits all day. The angry elves and detached Santa aren't right, but as you get older you understand them and get in on the joke: these people have probably been working a double shift in an overheated, crowded mall with kids being kids while wearing stupid ass costumes: ANYONE would be frustrated at that point, and the fact that you're just a few minutes away from it all being over. It works as you get older. Conversely, the kid in this movie goes to a mall to see the Nintendos are out of stock and a janitor goes into flashbacks. That joke doesn't improve as you age, it's Bob-tier humor, and anything in a Christmas Story that was like that was CLEARLY an imagination of the main character.
Now let's look at the relationship between the father/daughter and Ralphie/The Old Man (yes, that's the actual script name of Darin McGavin's character). The girl in 8-Bit is a little snot who needs a, to quote Sean Connery "schmack in the mooth." She's borderline disrespectful to her father, but that's because she's not written like a kid. She's written like an adult that happens to be played by a kid. Shitty Christmas movies do this all the time: they make a kid character who's wise beyond their years and just so much more mindful and thoughtful than their idiot parents. Now, this would NORMALLY work for a comedy family movie (it's not, but I'll get to that) except with HER as the main character with a narration as opposed to being in the frame and the story being about her dad's childhood. Compare Ralphie: the narration seems to be teasing the Old Man a lot (especially when he talks about the furnace), but it's gentle ribbing born from an adult understanding of why his dad seemed a bit goofy to him and is ultimately respectful. So his goofy moments can be enjoyed by everyone, as opposed to the kid-centric sarcastic bashing the girl in 8-Bit seems to get into.
One more point and I'll end this: A Christmas Story is a family movie. 8-Bit Christmas murdered the concept and wears it as an ill-fitting skinsuit to market to immature 30-something MEN with kids. Ultimately, it comes down to how the movies treat the characters. Everyone in a Christmas story is sympathetic. Kids may not understand why the adult characters act the way they do, but the adults do. As the kids who liked the movie get older, they understand more and more about everyone in the movie. Why did the teacher give Ralphie a bad grade? Because his report sucked. You wouldn't catch that as a kid. Why is his dad aloof? Because he's more worried about his wife and kids not starving or freezing to death. Actually: why does his dad love the stupid-ass leg lamp so much? Because he was excited he won something and wanted to show it off, PLUS it was something that was HIS. Not his wife's, not his kid's. Any married guy and even some single dudes understand what I mean by that. The list of examples goes on, and as you grow in life you get more and more context for everyone's actions. Conversely, everyone acts the way they do in 8-Bit because that's how they're supposed to act. Mom and Dad are jerks who don't care about kid shit, the kids are the put-upon heroes, and the bully is mentally unhinged because he just is, OKAY? It's all just so...clean and tidy. Everyone acts how you expect them to, and nothing is ever surprising. So kids and everyone who hasn't matured since the 90s will love it, while everyone else will see it as it is: an attempt to form a holiday classic in the most cynical, cookie-cutter way possible.
In the end, people will watch true classics like Elf and A Christmas Story. Manchildren and their kids will watch it: the soydads will laugh at the clueless manchild dad whose daughter constantly dunks on because in their case it's true, and the kids will love it because the kids are heroes and adults suck. In 5 years, no one will think anymore about it despite these people's best efforts: A Christmas Story will still play uninterrupted for 48 hours on cable, kids will still like Elf better, and it will make everyone who remembers it say "Yeah, you know...Jingle All the Way was actually funny even if it was a plotless romp through Schwarzenegger butchering the English language."
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
Second, the humor sucks. The funny parts aren't really funny and are just overexaggerated like Jim Carrey's comedy (except for the Vietnam line, but that's not through the writer's skill). It makes you laugh, but ultimately it's forgettable. What's your favorite Jim Carrey bit? Exactly. Now, I'll allow that was the point because it was probably meant to go along with the frame, but it all smacks of "lol so quirky" humor that has little basis in reality. Jean Shepard's magnum opus worked because what humor there was was grounded. Compare the mall scenes. In A Christmas Story, Ralphie becomes a victim of a few mall workers who have been dealing with bullshit in stupid outfits all day. The angry elves and detached Santa aren't right, but as you get older you understand them and get in on the joke: these people have probably been working a double shift in an overheated, crowded mall with kids being kids while wearing stupid ass costumes: ANYONE would be frustrated at that point, and the fact that you're just a few minutes away from it all being over. It works as you get older. Conversely, the kid in this movie goes to a mall to see the Nintendos are out of stock and a janitor goes into flashbacks. That joke doesn't improve as you age, it's Bob-tier humor, and anything in a Christmas Story that was like that was CLEARLY an imagination of the main character.
Now let's look at the relationship between the father/daughter and Ralphie/The Old Man (yes, that's the actual script name of Darin McGavin's character). The girl in 8-Bit is a little snot who needs a, to quote Sean Connery "schmack in the mooth." She's borderline disrespectful to her father, but that's because she's not written like a kid. She's written like an adult that happens to be played by a kid. Shitty Christmas movies do this all the time: they make a kid character who's wise beyond their years and just so much more mindful and thoughtful than their idiot parents. Now, this would NORMALLY work for a comedy family movie (it's not, but I'll get to that) except with HER as the main character with a narration as opposed to being in the frame and the story being about her dad's childhood. Compare Ralphie: the narration seems to be teasing the Old Man a lot (especially when he talks about the furnace), but it's gentle ribbing born from an adult understanding of why his dad seemed a bit goofy to him and is ultimately respectful. So his goofy moments can be enjoyed by everyone, as opposed to the kid-centric sarcastic bashing the girl in 8-Bit seems to get into.
One more point and I'll end this: A Christmas Story is a family movie. 8-Bit Christmas murdered the concept and wears it as an ill-fitting skinsuit to market to immature 30-something MEN with kids. Ultimately, it comes down to how the movies treat the characters. Everyone in a Christmas story is sympathetic. Kids may not understand why the adult characters act the way they do, but the adults do. As the kids who liked the movie get older, they understand more and more about everyone in the movie. Why did the teacher give Ralphie a bad grade? Because his report sucked. You wouldn't catch that as a kid. Why is his dad aloof? Because he's more worried about his wife and kids not starving or freezing to death. Actually: why does his dad love the stupid-ass leg lamp so much? Because he was excited he won something and wanted to show it off, PLUS it was something that was HIS. Not his wife's, not his kid's. Any married guy and even some single dudes understand what I mean by that. The list of examples goes on, and as you grow in life you get more and more context for everyone's actions. Conversely, everyone acts the way they do in 8-Bit because that's how they're supposed to act. Mom and Dad are jerks who don't care about kid shit, the kids are the put-upon heroes, and the bully is mentally unhinged because he just is, OKAY? It's all just so...clean and tidy. Everyone acts how you expect them to, and nothing is ever surprising. So kids and everyone who hasn't matured since the 90s will love it, while everyone else will see it as it is: an attempt to form a holiday classic in the most cynical, cookie-cutter way possible.
In the end, people will watch true classics like Elf and A Christmas Story. Manchildren and their kids will watch it: the soydads will laugh at the clueless manchild dad whose daughter constantly dunks on because in their case it's true, and the kids will love it because the kids are heroes and adults suck. In 5 years, no one will think anymore about it despite these people's best efforts: A Christmas Story will still play uninterrupted for 48 hours on cable, kids will still like Elf better, and it will make everyone who remembers it say "Yeah, you know...Jingle All the Way was actually funny even if it was a plotless romp through Schwarzenegger butchering the English language."
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
TL;DR- EnemyStand writes an essay about why the movie will suck based on the trailers, still a better critic than Moviebob.