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A waste of 90 minutes of my life

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Like most people I love "A Christmas Story". I had never even heard of this film and perhaps for good reason--it is awful. Same locale, same narrator, same director but the warm fuzziness of the original was lacking. Charles Grodin was a poor choice to replace Darrin McGavin but I cannot imagine anyone being able to replace him. The story seems forced and lacks the sweetness of the original. The interaction with the neighbors, the Bumpuses, is ridiculous. In "A Christmas Story" Ralphie's obsession with the BB gun seems cute but his obsession in this movie is boring. Scud Farkus, the original neighborhood bully, is replaced in this film by yet another kid with braces and a weird hat but with little of the Scud Farkus menacing appeal. It would be pretty difficult to equal the original, even if this movie had been made with the original crew.

I so wanted this film to work. A Christmas Story is a real classic. It combines a tone and sense of humor that I think is pretty unique and has really become one of my favorite films. I was disappointed to see that the original cast had changed for this sequel but I still figured it might work. Culkin is a good actor and it seemed plausible that it could all work again. But the thing is - the movie almost suffers from trying to hard to be like the original even though it isn't anything like the original. This has a strange effect and leaves the viewer wondering what kind of movie this is. Others have also commented that Charles Grodin is positively terrible in the film - and that's sad both because he was actually a pretty charming guy in other movies and because the original Dad was so good.

"A Christmas Story" is one of many people's all-time most beloved films. ACS was able to take the viewer to a time and a place in such a way that very few films ever have. It had a sweetness and goodwill to it that is rare.So I awaited (and awaited) its sequel, "It Runs In The Family" . The film was almost released a couple of times, only to be pulled at the last minute. When it finally came out, IRITF was (and is, I guess) a total failure.The sets and cinematography were just fine, but the directing totally, completely missed the mark. The film was nothing more than a cash-flow formula of lazy casting, lazy writing, and disconnected acting.The narrator, Jean Shepard, who was one of America's great humorists and story-tellers, forced upon us a false reprise of the warm wit he used in ACS. He over-emoted, and why he did that I'll never know. He somehow managed to become an annoying, overwrought parody of himself.The writing and acting in IRITF is inauthentic and forced. The actors may have seen ACS, but whatever wit and nuance that was in ACS mustn't have registered at all on any of them. The acting was embarrassingly slapstick and bereft of any of Shepard's dry humor.ACS will always be a real treasure, but to call IRITF a sequel is to insult all of the fans of Jean Shepard and ACS.

(Spoilers) No matter what you think about the rest of the movie, the last scene was a real gem. The camera pans on mother Mary Steenburgen, listening with a smile on the house steps as her husband's pals trade vulgar stories with Ralphie in attendance. Her boy's been admitted to the man's club! Then she jumps up with a yelp and runs to pull him out when a story gets TOO raunchy. I loved it!