The mostly forgotten 1994 film It Runs In The Family (also known as My Summer Story) attempted to serve as a sequel to 1983's A Christmas Story, yet few were interested in seeing the Parker family out of season like that. Surely they celebrated other Christmases, on and on through the awkward pubescence of Ralphie and his pals, doomed to repeat the exact same comic situations with exponential amounts of slapstick naughtiness until they break the cycle of petty desire? The "official" A Christmas Story 2—the last hurrah of Warner Digital's straight-to-video sequel mill—confirms that, yes, Ralphie et al. remain trapped in a time loop that mirrors their cable TV purgatory. This particular year, Ralphie has his obsessive-compulsive eye on a car, and time has cruelly distorted the Old Man into Daniel Stern. But otherwise, everything is squarely in the realm of the comfortingly familiar for the Parkers, each passing holiday some subtle yet louder variation on the last, until finally they're liberated from their temporal prison by the sweet embrace of death.

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