All roads lead to Christmas for Richard Curtis. His particular blend of writing and storytelling, when not around December 25th, has started to lead to some truly disastrous films that waste spectacular premises. So good on you Richard. This is a time of forgiveness, and you learned from your mistakes. Adapting your own Christmas story into That Christmas with Netflix, doubling down on this time of year as what you do well.
That Christmas Curtis is talking about takes place in Wellington England in the few days before and after Noel. There’s basically 3 sets of kids here that we follow: Danny Williams (Jack Wisniewski), the newish very shy kid in town living with his overworked mother (Jodie Whitaker). There’s twin Beccles girls, Sam (Zazie Hayhurst) is the sweet, nebbish one while Charlie (Sienna Sayer) is the rebel constantly pushing Sam and everyone’s buttons. And then there’s a host of kids, led by Bernie (India Brown), the alpha kid in school, whose parents get stuck in a snowstorm forcing Bernie to take charge like she does in the school play. Santa (Brian Cox) may or may not be involved as well.
A “Richard Curtis” movie means you’re going to see a few standard hallmarks of his in That Christmas. 1) We’re going to open with a bunch of outdated jokes that set up how everyone in this town is not quite in sync with each other at the start. In this case, it’s a really dumb school play where the parents essentially mock the kids. 2) There’s gonna be one or two plot lines that flirt with poor taste. For an animated Christmas movie, that means unnecessarily putting a group of characters in life threatening danger and treating their peril as a dumb joke. But if you can get over that icky stuff, in the middle 3) Curtis finds magic and schmaltzy gooey sweetness where the movie eventually gets to: frankly, ideal for this holiday season. Here, the magic lies in different ways the kids learn to rise above their sad, unfortunate circumstances and embrace/learn about the good in their life instead. Each of the triad of kid sections has wonderful moments, with the best being what Danny realizes and helps to appreciate.
That Christmas is perfect holiday set up fodder. Put this on to keep the kids busy while you work on setting up for the plethora of family about to descend on your house. And when you look up every now & again, something mostly sweet will be happening, or a lovely modern Christmas song will be playing so you’re not just stuck listening to Mariah Carey. Keep the Curtis Xmases coming Richard. This is you now, and I am happy to be along on the sleigh ride.