A Christmas Story Previews — Page 2

I saw this tonight.

First of all, the movie is wonderful. One of the best Christmas movies, and one of the best 80's movies ever made; as the film nears its 30th birthday it's become clear that it deserves the label of "classic."

The Chinese restaurant scene is indeed hilarious in the film, and make no mistake, this humor is not of the 40's, but of the 80's. Don't forget the mom's red hair is done in a Meg Ryan loose perm style!

Now onto the musical. Other than Dan Lauria, who really does a nice job, the show is complete dreck. Where, o where to begin. The whole thing looks like it was produced for $5.95. Cheap sets, cheap (and ugly) costumes. The santa slide set is the worst offender as the slide doesn't even face the audience and isn't big enough, which defeats the whole joke.

The book and score don't get much better. They give us the movie scene for scene, word for word. Plus they pause the action for all the songs. It makes for a very long 2.5 hours. Of all the recent movie to musical adaptations this one screams, "Why didn't I just stay home and watch the movie?!" loudest.

Before After Eight admitted to never having seen this movie I would have thought everyone was familiar with it, if for no other reason than it's rerun ad nauseum every year on tv. I can watch the movie every Christmas and laugh, but somehow on stage it's all too obvious and all the humor is lost.

Not only do the songs halt the action, they aren't any good. Bland, generic- you know the drill. It really makes crap like Chaplin smell pretty sweet.

It looks like Ralphie is played by alternating actors, so I don't know if I saw the same actor Jordan and After Eight saw, and I feel a little guilty about attacking a child, but he was not good. I mean Gina found more notes in "An English Teacher" than this kid did tonight. The actor who played his brother was weak too, and the eat like a little piggy bit fell flat.

The whole thing was just stupid. The film is just too good to be shat on in this fashion.

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And all of BWW collectively rolls their eyes.

As Jordan mentioned, the scene in the Chinese restaurant is definitely one of the most famous (and hysterical) scenes in the movie. I'm glad they weren't afraid enough to sanitize the material and cut the joke.

Part of what makes the scene work so well is that it's filmed in a stationary long shot, Woody Allen style. McGavin is expert in his delivery of, "I think it's smiling at me," and the singing isn't presented in a cruel manner. In fact Melinda Dillon is laughing in spite of know it's wrong throughout.

If they had to turn the movie into a show it should have just been a play, with perhaps some traditional carols thrown in.

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Updated On: 11/9/12 at 11:49 PM

Actually, no.

I happened to return from the theatre this evening and opened this thread, and there he was. You'll notice I was responding to several posts.

To be honest, I much prefer not reading that poster's threads, and have been happily avoiding them until I came upon his post this evening.

I like seeing that person's posts.

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Caroline O'Connor! I adore her. I didn't know she was in it!

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I'm drunk and confused.

Ha! It does!

Ugh. I've never seen the movie, so maybe this shouldn't be my first exposure to it, but I kind of want to see it.

Awww! That makes me even more intrigued. I mean, after seeing Scandalous, I need to see some theater that will reignite my love for it.

Ha, to be clear I meant you'd go mental in a bad way! I don't know if this show will be reigniting anything for you...

Jordan, yeah it's better than Scandalous, at least in so much that the main house set actually moves on and off the stage and doesn't encumber the action. Still everything looks VERY cheap and actors are forced to push around chairs, desks, PINE TREES ON WHEELS and a car that gives Good Vibrations a run for its money. (Ok so the car from Good Vibrations may have been fashioned out of folding chairs, and this isn't so bad, but it's not good either!)

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I really find it offensive when actors have to move the set on Broadway. It's different when it's suppose to be a low-budget show like the recent Sweeney. That makes sense and that's a style. But shows like Chaplin and this, c'mon. You're paying $120 for a ticket.