8-Bit Christmas (2021)

Directed by Michael Dowse. Starring Winslow Fegley, June Diane Raphael, Steve Zahn, Neil Patrick Harris, Bellaluna Resnick, Sophia Reid-Gantzert, Max Malas, Che Tafari, Chandler Deane, Cyrus Arnold, Brielle Rankins, David Cross, Santino Barnard, Jacob Laval, Tom Rooney, Katia Smith, Braelyn Rankins. [PG]

What if A Christmas Story was a 90-minute commercial for Nintendo? That’s pretty much what you get with this mild family-friendly holiday offering. Instead of Jean Shepherd’s grating nostalgia-corn anecdotes, Harris narrates through a framing device where he employs a false equivalency to explain to his daughter why she can’t get a cell phone; he tells her about how, in the late-80s, he (and all of his friends) were desperate to get a Nintendo Entertainment System, but even with Christmas approaching, his parents (Raphael, Zahn) ignored or dismissed his pleas at every turn. A little “exaggeration” and “fantasy” comes with the territory, but the entire premise is on shaky ground from the start (how was it possible that only one kid in the entire school district—a rich, insufferable brat, of course—owned a NES?), and although there are sporadic amusing moments and a few pockets of heart, it’s more earnest and predictable than clever and imaginative. It doesn’t help matters that the young protagonist (Fegley) is upstaged (for better or worse) by so many of his weird and/or irritating juvenile peers. Features the expected bevy of 80s pop culture references—leg warmers, roller rinks, Cabbage Patch Kids, etc.—even though it’s more restrained than one might expect from a story absorbed in such a commercialist quest. Does get at least one thing right: the Power Glove really did suck.

49/100