★★★
It’s been two decades since Love in fact rewrote the Christmas movie manual, mostly by exhausting it. If you’ve ever wondered what an infantilization of the concept of interconnectivity would look like, Netflix’s project This Christmas has the answer. The film is Richard Curtis’ second festive offering in as many years, following the 2023 release. Geniuswell, that’s okay. Colorful, inoffensive, mildly entertaining… pick your adjective bland and damn it with light praise at your leisure.
Based on Curtis’ own picture book, “That Christmas and Other Stories,” the film is the work of Locksmith Animation, the still-burgeoning studio behind the equally innocuous 2021 film. Ron Gone Wrong. The house style comes closest to a budget Illumination, falling somewhat short of Rebecca Cobb’s more vivid illustrations for the book, and lacking the soul and humanity of Pixar. The attempt to convey the cold weather of the story by making the cheeks of the young people in the film’s cohort red had the unfortunate side effect of making everyone feel like they had just been slapped by a disciplinarian parent. Such cruelty does not actually exist in this world.
Brian Cox narrates the story, voicing a single reindeer Santa on a Christmas Eve besieged by the worst blizzard ever seen in the Southeast. The setting is Wellington-on-Sea, a fictional seaside town, probably named after Curtis’s birthplace in New Zealand and in the process of moving to his current home in East Suffolk. There’s more snow here than we’ve ever seen in Southwold, but it allows for a certain biscuit tin aesthetic that we have to forgive at Christmas. An excess of white matter also makes the film its softest material, as a lonely boy and his lonelier teacher build snowmen in the schoolyard. It’s a gently charged sequence.
Another strand of the weave finds twin sisters, one naughty, the other nice, mixed up on the big man’s famous list, while elsewhere a precocious girl is left to run a children’s-only Christmas night when their moms and dads find themselves stuck. the storm. There are curtisms everywhere, from the shabby school Nativity, updated in extravagant modern ways, to the super-woman single mother abandoned by her absent ex, and the shy boy yearning for the love of a equally shy girl. None of this is really exciting. Curtis’ script lacks sharpness in its humor and struggles with familiarity. Much like Ed Sheeran’s dark melody dropped halfway through, That Christmas charms and annoys in equal measure.
There’s at least some fun in name-checking an all-star cast. Fiona Shaw is a highlight, as is northern newcomer Jack Wisniewski, who plays the son of an energetic Jodie Whittaker. Bill Nighy plays an old lighthouse keeper, while Katherine Parkinson, Alex Macqueen and Rosie Cavaliero are among the parents. They all bring a joyful eccentricity, even if the lack of vocal fluidity rather stilts the dialogic bounce. Perhaps it’s the inexperience of first-time director Simon Otto, best known for his supervision of animation at DreamWorks. How to train your dragon. So a little setback.
If this small size Love in fact will not enjoy the same longevity as its ancestor, there is enough kindness for the here and now. For the very young, it is best enjoyed with hot chocolate and a thick blanket.
T.S.