2021, d. Michael Dowse (Goon, Fubar) - HBO Max
Let's just get it out of the way: 8-Bit Christmas is clearly inspired by A Christmas Story, but with the sense of updating it to a modern-day retelling of a late-80's adventure in misadventure.
The film opens with Neil Patrick Harris's pre-teen daughter angling for a cel phone for Christmas, which he's just not willing to concede on. He regales his daughter with a tale of technology he wanted desperately as a kid, and we are transported back to 1988.
Young Jake Doyle (an incredibly solid lead performance from Winslow Fegley), more than anything, wants a Nintendo for Christmas. His parents (June Diane Raphael and Steve Zahn) are both opposed, but for different reasons. Mrs. Doyle runs the household and controls their meagre budget (it's clear money is an issue). She prides herself on being charitable to pretty much everyone but seems to neglect putting that charity towards her family. Zahn's father figure is a bit of a dummy, a little absent-minded, and very stuck in his ways. He's strict, but stupidly so, with no logic applied to his discipline, and so he's kind of Jake's chief antagonist, amidst a field of them. Yet, he's still his dad, and he's trying his best.
Jake's other antagonists include Timmy Keane -- the spoiled rich kid who is the only kid in the area who has a Nintendo and lords it over all the other children, accepting gifts to allow them the privilege of watching him play. There's also Josh Jagorski, who looks like he's four years older than the other kids in grade 7, because he probably is. Josh is massive and awkward and, with no peers to relate to, is thus left with no other option but to bully all the other kids. And then there's Jake's alpha little sister Lizzy, who has their father under her thumb. She's brainy and a demanding and gets her way far more often than Jake and certainly lets him know it.
The story revolves around Jake's obsession with Nintendo and the void its absence seems to leave in his life. Everything seems to dovetail back to Nintendo. But is as much about his friendships and his family dynamic. There's maybe a couple lessons being relayed here, that sometimes you have to work for or earn something you want, or being grateful for what you have, or that maybe life kinda passes you buy if you're just playing video games all the time. If Jake had just gotten a Nintendo there would be no story to tell and Jake would have missed out on some real big moments with his friends and family. Nothing makes me feel like a crap dad than watching my kids spend hours upon hours playing video games rather than engaging with practically anything else, so I get it. But I'm also of the same generation that this film portrays, I had video games growing up, and I understand the desire, but there's few lasting memories there, certainly not memories that supplant time spent with friends and family (unless it's time playing video games with friends and family). I didn't watch 8-Bit Christmas with my kids because they were too busy playing video games (or watching people play video games on youtube), but I wish I had.
8-Bit Christmas is a pretty fun and often funny adventure through 80's middle-school hijinks. I found I was more invested the further it got in, starting with the family trip to the shopping mall. The cool kids over at Letterboxd question "who is this for?" thinking it's too specific to appeal to today's kids or that the humour is too juvenile for adults or that it's just too steeped in nostalgia. But if we're looking at A Christmas Story as a reference, there you have a highly nostalgic, highly specific, often juvenile movie from the early 80's set in the 1950s. There are things in A Christmas Story that seem dangerously outdated for 80's kids and an old-head mentality that shouldn't resonate, but the story of kids desiring something that they can't have, or receiving something that isn't necessarily healthy for them can be universally understood. There's a "can you imagine?" sensibility to both these movies. The only difference is GenZ has been bred to be "cool", and there's nothing cool about wallowing in nostalgia or earnestness. And this movie ends with a genuinely earnest, hit you right in the feelings moment.
I don't see 8-Bit Christmas as sentimental towards the 80's so much as sentimental towards childhood, and not even specifically an 80's childhood. It also doesn't fetishize the 80's. It lives as a story set in the era and it's kind of like "what a fucking time, I can't believe we survived it".
I don't know that it's an instant classic, but after watching a plethora of Hallmarkies over the past six weeks, this one jumps out. Production values, comedy, real snow and cold environments... it's kind of dazzling. I imagine I'll be rewatching this, maybe even as a double feature with A Christmas Story, maybe even with the kids, maybe even in the next 2 weeks before Christmas.
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