The Homecoming: A Christmas Story
December 2003 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

This favorite holiday television movie has finally come to DVD in a transfer so good that the show seems minted this year, rather than 30-plus years ago. Set during the Depression, it tells the story of a Christmas Eve on the Blue Ridge Mountains, about 50 miles from Charlottesville, Virginia, as the Walton family prepares for a meager holiday while waiting for its head, John Walton, to return from his job far down the road. There’s word of a bus accident on the radio and Mamma Walton (Patricia Neal) fears the worst. She finally sends her oldest son, John Boy (Richard Thomas), out into the cold night to fetch his father home, or find out the truth about his whereabouts.

The characters and situations in this moving and often humorous film are so finely drawn that they defy criticism. One would have to be Scrooge to level any complaints. The setting is pristine and all the period details are perfectly presented. Neal is stalwart and stern, yet ultimately warm, as the family’s matriarch, and Thomas has never experienced any better moments as an actor than those here. The one scene between the two of them, when Neal discovers that Thomas has been writing his biography on tablets in hopes of becoming an author, is realistic and moving. The rest of the family is ideally cast. There is lots of sentiment and closeness among these people, but the plot never veers into the bathos or sentimentality in which this show’s many imitators wallow.

The DVD transfer is fresh and bright. The colors are warm, rich, and deep, boasting an overall glow that contains a fine focus that allows every detail to be observed. The contrast is especially good -- no, perfect. There are scenes in the cellar and barn that contain deep shadows, which are precisely rendered without any murkiness. The sound has excellent frequency range. The early-in-his-career score by Jerry Goldsmith, containing so much Americana you can almost predict it, is clean and clear, and every word of dialogue is audible.

There are no extras. This seems a shame since this movie spawned a TV series that lasted a long time and gave birth to many long-standing careers. There should have been biographies of all the fine actors, and author Earl Hamner Jr., as well as some sort of featurette on the Depression and how it affected the Blue Ridge. Sometimes in the world of DVD, it seems that the least significant programming gets the lion’s share of the features, whereas the most durable vehicles are slighted. Perhaps that is just, in a perverse way, since movies like this can stand on their own. Can you imagine something like Terminator 3 or The Italian Job doing that?

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