Hooligan kids show a small town the real meaning of Christmas in this holiday yarn with a Sunday School spin
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
Starring Judy Greer and Pete Holmes
Directed by Dallas Jenkins
Rated PG
In theaters Friday, Nov. 9
Based on a Christmas yarn first published in McCall’s magazine in the ‘70s—and later made into a novel—this holiday tale is about a group of unruly, wrong-side-of-the-tracks kids who infiltrate their small town’s nativity play, ultimately showing everyone the real reason for the season.
The ever-versatile Judy Greer is the mom who steps into the fray to direct the wobbly production; standup comedian and actor Pete Holmes plays her helpful husband. The disruptive kids are six scrappy little-rascal siblings regarded as the local bullies, troublemakers and fire-starters. They may not know all the details of Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, but they dive into the play anyway, motivated by finding out the church provides snacks.
The result: A unique spin on a familiar old story.
Director Dallas Jenkins—whose crowd-funded life-of-Jesus series, The Chosen, is in its fourth season—puts a Sunday School spin on the shenanigans, blending kid-zone humor with a more serious theme about how Christmas is for everyone, including bullies and troublemakers, and how Jesus was all about the poor, the outcast and the marginalized. The movie tells us the town’s longstanding Christmas pageant, now celebrating its 75th year, had become overly familiar and cookie-cutter predictable, in need of a shakeup and a makeover—suggesting that even faithful churchgoers can sometimes get stuck in a rut and would benefit from a good goosing.
In a couple of scenes we see where the wayward siblings live, in a scrappy house that’s basically a shack, pretty much raising themselves. It’s a not-so-subtle reminder of the humble circumstances described the familiar story of the birth of the Christ child—away in a manger, no crib for a bed, indeed.
The film’s marketing campaign is clearly targeting traditional Christian believers…and any adolescents who might think hearing someone say “butt” or “pussy willow” is tee-hee hilarious. It’s an earnest, sermonizing B-movie that so wants to be another Christmas “classic,” specifically A Christmas Story—from which it borrows some of its retro mojo, including its narration by the now-grown-up version of one of the kids (in this case, former Gilmore Girl Lauren Graham). And maybe it’s just coincidence, but one of the li’l disruptors (Matthew Lamb) looks a lot like bespectacled, fair-haired Ralphie from A Christmas Story.
So, it’s a Christmas story that wants to be A Christmas Story. But it’s more straightforward about the meaning of Christmas—to Christians, anyway—and not Bumpis hounds, leg lamps, turkey leftovers or the risks of shooting an eye out with a BB gun. And it does prod viewers to re-think the origin story central to the Christian faith by seeing it unfold from a new perspective—with a shrieking angel, wise men lugging a cooked ham and a cigar-smoking teenage Mary back-slapping her babydoll, in case infant Jesu is a bit gassy.
Joy (burp!) to the world, y’all!
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 