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Can you tell me the name of ...

Question: Can you tell me the name of this movie? We saw it sometime in the '90s, but think it is set in the '50s. It's about about a boy and a spinning top, and his loud, obnoxious neighbors have an outhouse or a toilet in their yard.


Answer: You're looking for It Runs in the Family (1994), based on radio personality Jean Shepherd's novels In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters. Family is a less successful sequel to A Christmas Story (1993), which is also based on In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, one of Shepherd's bittersweet (and often very funny) evocations of growing up in the Midwest in the '50s.

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