“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” the latest film of the based on the early ’70s Barbara Robinson novel, comes to the screen with all the charms and shortcomings of a thousand Little Theatre stage productions over the decades.
Uplifting in the right spots, touching near the end, cute and yet cloying, maudlin and manipulative everywhere else, it punches a lot of familiar buttons when it comes to faith-based films for the holidays.
The director of “The Chosen” TV series finds some of the laughs but struggles to keep it moving at a pace that would make this story of a looming disaster comically pay off. Dallas Jenkins goes for slow and easy sentiment when a hint of knockabout farce would do the picture a world of good.
Judy Greer is well-cast as the plucky late 1970s mom who takes on a church Nativity pageant only to have the Emmanuel church annual event taken over by a gang of poor, ill-mannered child bullies.
Sure, there are a lot of moving if somewhat static parts to the pageant — children singing carols as a narrator tells the story of the birth of Jesus and other children pose as Mary, Joseph, an Angel of the Lord, shepherds, wise men, the innkeeper, and others who take up all the rooms at “the inn.” And kids are involved, with their own herding-cats challenges.
But the town of Emmanuel has been putting this show on for 75 years, so it’s become less of a challenge than a “tradition” running on auto-pilot. This pretty little girl has played Mary a couple of times, a tall boy from the church has been Joseph, and the lady running it has been on the job for decades.
An accident takes out the regular director, and under-estimated “just bring the (store bought) cookies” Grace (Greer) volunteers to tackle the gig. And when her son (Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez) blurts to a school snack-stealing bully that he can get plenty more sweets at his church’s pageant and potluck, all of a sudden Grace has six new kids not just vying for roles, but demanding them.
The Herdmans are tiny terrors, bullying hellions who are “the worst kids in the history of the world.” And when they show up, looking for sweets and looking for roles, they basically hijack the show.
But they have questions. Lots of them.
What’s a ‘play’? What’s an “‘inn?” “What’s a ‘manger?'”
Mary’s “great with child?” What’s that mean?
The sextet may be feared by all their peers, with adults labeling many a town incident “another Herdman fire.” But they don’t know this story, its religious significance or even this form of live “entertainment.”
Beatrice Schneider impresses as Imogene, the oldest Herman, the toughest and the ringleader. She insists on playing Mary, and makes the necessary threats to the town Miss Prissy, Alice (Lorelei Olivia Mote) to ensure that happens. Kynlee Heiman plays Imogene’s younger sister, an almost aboriginal fury who bites and screams and terrifies all who encounter her.
And no other kid in this town and that church can stand up to the four Herdman boys. That goes for Grace too, despite pressure from the church busybodies to ditch the Godless heathen Herdmans and do the pageant “the way we’e always done it.”
But Grace sees the children having something like a religious awakening (as if) and potentially changed by their experience learning about, playing and understanding these iconic figures from “The Greatest Story Ever Told.”
The viewer can be forgiven for noting, “Lady, you’re encouraging bullying by letting bullies win,” a bone I’ve picked with every version of this I’ve seen — stage or screen. And even the best adaptations of this “changed by learning about the virgin birth” kiddy show are too sappy for anybody with a family history of diabetes.
The screenplay hits the compassionate moments tear-jerker hard, and the comic moments not nearly hard enough.
But Greer holds down the fort, and keeps the picture on message if not on task. Lauren Graham ably narrates (over-narrates, truth be told) the story as Grace’s now-adult daughter Beth, who experienced this “Christmas miracle” as an elementary schooler (played by Molly Belle-Wright).
And Pete Holmes is OK as Grace’s skeptical husband, a doubter who can’t see these unruly kids as “wise men” or Joseph or Mary or anybody else.
But even Dad has a soft spot for children whose hard upbringing is surely scarring them. And as the faithful like to say, holiday miracles come in all shapes and sizes, even if they don’t necessarily know what frankincense and myrrh are.
Rating: PG
Cast: Judy Greer, Beatrice Schneider, Pete Holmes, Molly Belle-Wright, Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez, Kynlee Heiman and Lauren Graham.
Credits: Directed by Dallas Jenkins, scripted by Platte F. Clarke, Darin McDaniel and Ryan Swanson, based on the Barbara Robinson novel. A Lionsgate release.
Running time: 1:39
