An Abomination of Christmas

It's Christmas Day.  You've woken up early, stumbled down the stairs to the Christmas tree anxiously awaiting the appropriate moment to open presents.  You're a morning person, you're not... it doesn't matter.  This is the day worth waking up for.  Mom's in the kitchen making a delicious breakfast and dad's taking much too long to get out of bed.  You or one of your siblings is "Santa" passing around the presents with the appropriate names on them.  You're sitting on the sofa with a stack of gifts just waiting for that exact second where it's finally time to open the first box.

You're almost out of breath by how fast you've unwrapped these gifts.  You saved the package you were most excited for for last.  But, now it's over.  It's barely 8:00 AM and Christmas is already over.  Now, all you have to look forward to is a few relatives who don't really know you giving you gifts you didn't really want.  You're thinking about how much you can get in cash for that nasty sweater your Aunt Tandy gave you.  You smell the food cooking in the oven, but know it's at least five or six hours until everything is done.  You're too old for toys so most of your presents you can't really enjoy at that particular moment of waiting.  (By the way, don't act as if I'm treating Christmas like it's all about presents, because you know it is.  Next time you volunteer at a homeless shelter, then you can tell me to kiss your ass.)

It seems like the remaining hours until dinner are too far to comprehend.  But, wait... you forgot something!  The best part of Christmas is just a click away.  On TBS.  It's A Christmas Story being shown for 24 hours!  How did you not remember this??  The TV is turned on and Christmas is back.  Ralphie, The Old Man, Randy, Mom, Flick, Schwartz, Santa, the leg lamp, the tongue on the pole, Scut Farkus and his yellow eyes... he had yellow eyes!, oh fudge, the Bumpas hounds, Ovaltine, the ruined turkey, the Red Ryder BB gun, shooting your eye out, Black Bart, the red soap, the Christmas duck, and more.  It's the greatest Christmas movie ever (if you say It's A Wonderful Life, you're wrong and you don't deserve Christmas).  There's a reason TBS plays that movie every Christmas Day over and over and over again.  It's a story of childhood innocence, of a father-and-son relationship, of growing up, of everything that is right about Christmas.

Except...

Dark forces are among us. Scamming us.  Trying to murder our brains by destroying its cells one by one.  Taking our money until we're nothing but lobotomized vegetables staring at our TV screens drooling out one side of our mouths, giggling for no reason, and shitting our pants for no explainable reason except that we didn't have the brain power to understand not to.  What am I talking about?  What if I said to you that in 2012, twenty-nine years after the release of A Christmas Story, the money-hungry whores at Warner Bros. decided it was a good idea to release... a sequel?  What would you do?  Laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.  Cry at the reality that I wasn't telling the truth?  Well, my friends, I regret to inform you that it is one hundred percent true.

A Christmas Story 2, a direct-to-dvd sequel has been made and will be released in the upcoming Christmas season.  On the list of unnecessary sequels I'd rank this somewhere between Operation Dumbo Drop and Norbit.  So, who did Warner hire that would actually dare touch a sequel to a classic?  How about Hollywood choad Brian Levant whose track record (Snow Dogs, Are We There Yet, The Spy Next Door) gives a little insight, but not enough to warrant spending time, effort, money and energy on taking a large dump on a classic.  That's like Uwe Boll trying to make a sequel to The Shawshank Redemption.  First, realize what you're about to do, then, second, kill yourself.

I've regrettably attached the trailer below for your viewing pleasure torment.  What bothers me, aside from the mere existence of this "film", is that they've broken the rule of sequels!  They've essentially remade the original movie in a shittier way, using the same jokes that are now not funny, with elements that are completely inconceivably irreparably retarded.  This is a bad comparison, but it's like The Hangover: Part II.  They replaced Vegas with Thailand, replaced losing a tooth with getting a tattoo, replaced a baby/tiger with a monkey and replaced their lost friend for a lost brother-in-law.  It was the same damn movie!  Down to the minute!  Ed Helms even sings another song!  That's what A Christmas Story 2 does.  It takes all of the best moments from its predecessor and recreates them with different actors.  When steam emanates from the furnace, it's a "clinker!", when Randy is getting ready for school... you better believe Mom is wrapping his face up with a giant scarf, what does the Old Man get for Christmas??  A leg lamp!!!!  I'm willing to bet that someone's tongue gets stuck to a pole right after two fart jokes and a yellow snow joke.

It's a Christmas abomination that should've been aborted by Hollywood doctors before the idea was ever surged into someone's brain.  Watch the trailer, but grab a bucket... you're going to be sick.

What happened to you, Daniel Stern?  You used to be cool.