Why So Blu?

A Christmas Story (4K UHD Blu-ray Review)

This holiday season, Warner Bros Home Entertainment is upgrading four of their most treasured Christmas classics to the 4K Ultra-HD Blu-ray format. All of them coming with digital copy codes and the previous extras. The lineup includes National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, The Polar Express and Elf. Each of them was released on November 1st. You can order them by using the paid Amazon Associates links that follow at the bottom of their respective reviews. This particular review is covering the almost 40 year old and getting a new sequel this year BB gun shoot em up, A Christmas Story.

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Film

Set in a 1940s-era Midwestern town and told from the viewpoints of a seven-year-old boy, who only wants one thing for Christmas — a Red Ryder BB gun — the episodic tale chronicles not only his schemes to convince his mother and father to buy him one, but also offers a warmly nostalgic look into 1940s middle-class American life. From the stories of, and narrated by, Jean Shepherd.

When you ask people what their favorite Christmas/Holiday movie is, there’s a very good chance that they are going to say A Christmas Story. Whether it truly was their favorite or TBS beat them into submission with showing it all the time, it is indeed one of the more fun films to see over the holidays. Growing up for me at least, this one kind of had a cult classic nature to it, that not everybody seemed to know of it or you didn’t realize so many people watched it every year or liked it as much as you did. The film didn’t quite fit the mold as did many of your traditional holiday regulars.

Part of the joy and ease of revisiting A Christmas Story comes in the way its told. Its almost done in bits and comedic skits that play out start to finish and then we wipe the board clean and reset. There’s a whole wraparound story and some jokes get revisited, but it feels like a nice sketch comedy that features the same characters collected into one funny movie. You have your leg lamps sketch, the bullies sketches, visiting Santa, dinner gone wrong, etc. And it just flows and works well. A true movie you can just pick up damn near anywhere in it and sit til then end. This also goes for if you’ve never seen it.

Bob Clark has a pretty crazy filmography in the things he’s given us and how different they are that you’d never believe it was the same guy. He gave us a horror and slasher staple in this same Christmas genre with Black Christmas. As wholesome and family fun as it this movie is, 2 years earlier, the guy delivered Porky’s. Oh, and speaking of children, Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things. Nonetheless, when the guy tackles a specific genre or holiday, it becomes timeless and a staple. And there’s no denying A Christmas Story is just that. I’m not sure A Christmas Story Christmas will be.

Video

Disclaimer: Screen captures used in the review from the standard Blu-ray included with this release, not the 4K UHD Blu-ray disc.

Encoding: HEVC / H.265

Resolution: 4K (2160p)

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Layers: BD-66

Clarity/Detail: A Christmas Story was released on Blu-ray during the first year of the format. It hasn’t seen an updated transfer since. So there’s a lot here on the 4K Ultra-HD Blu-ray release. It was originally encoded with VC-1. The film was also cropped to a 1.78:1 image. Now, we have the 1.85:1 appearance. The new transfer plays with a lot more confidence, with better colors, much more detail and some good depth of field. This handles the soft, glossy lighting much better too.

Depth: Depth of field is rock solid here. With the layer of grain intact, you can see some good pushback in the home and get a better, bigger sense of scale in the mall. Motion is smooth and filmic with no issues coming from distortions caused by rapid action.

Black Levels: Blacks are deep and natural in this image. There’s good saturation and details/pattern/texture visible in some of even the darkest areas. No crushing witnessed.

Color Reproduction: Colors are bold and natural with an overall warmth to them. Reds and greens (ho ho ho) come through with good beauty. HDR helps lights, fires and of course the leg lamp glow.

Flesh Tones: Skin tones are natural and consistent from start to finish of the film. Facial features and textures are pretty visible from any reasonable distance in the frame.

Noise/Artifacts: Clean.

Audio

Audio Format(s): English 2.0 DTS-HD MA, French 2.0 Dolby Digital, Spanish 2.0 Dolby Digital

Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French

Dynamics: A Christmas Story’s 4K Ultra-HD Blu-ray debut also improves the audio track greatly. What once was a 1.0 lossy mono track is now a 2.0 lossless one. Its much more loud an nuanced in its appearance. You can hear much more depth with this being louder and cleaner coming through your channels. There’s also much better low frequency power to it as well.

Height: N/A

Low Frequency Extension: N/A

Surround Sound Presentation: N/A

Dialogue Reproduction:  Vocals are crisp and clean.

Extras

A Christmas Story comes with the standard Blu-ray edition and a redeemable digital code.

Audio Commentary

• by Bob Clark and Peter Billingsley

Christmas in Ohio: A Christmas Story House (HD, 21:15) 

Another Christmas Story (HD, 18:18)

Dasiy Red Ryder: A History (HD, 5:18)

Get a Leg Up (HD, 4:38)

“Flash Gordon” Deleted Script Pages (HD, 3:11)

The Leg Lamp Spot (HD, :49)

Jean Shepherd Original Radio Reading

• Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid (HD, 38:07)
• Flick’s Tongue (HD, 30:50)

Theatrical Trailer (HD, 2:10)

Summary

A Christmas Story can just automatically play in some of our heads, we know it so well. Or it can run for 24 hours on TBS or TNT. But, you still should probably pick up its 4K Ultra-HD Blu-ray debut. This thing looks and sounds better than ever, and the standard Blu-ray included keeps intact all the bonus features, so you don’t lose out on those. Upgrade this holiday staple this season.

This is a paid Amazon Associates link