Watched: 11/23/2024
Format: Cinepolis Theater
Viewing: First
Director: Dallas Jenkins
Selection: KareBear
So, yes. This was not entirely my idea.
The book which inspired the film The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (2024) was a staple in our household while I was growing up. In it's way, the book was as familiar as Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary for me (I can't speak for Steanso). But I honestly haven't revisited the book in decades or seen the older movie version with Loretta Swit. But every Christmas, whether it's at church with my folks or watching someone at the Vatican read scripture, when they get to the right part, I think of Gladys yelling "Hey! Unto you a child is born!"
For context - While growing up, we were very involved in any church we attended, and my mom, The KareBear, ran the Sunday School at a couple of them.* My mom's perennial draw to the book likely stemmed from seeing herself in several roles in the book - from the hard-scrabble kid growing up figuring things out, to the pious girl who loves church (our narrator, Beth), and culminating in herself as the overextended mom running a Christmas Pageant wherein things are not ideal.
I'll admit, from the kid participant perspective in Christmas pageants - this thing lands. (My earliest memories include my mom making me be an angel in a Vacation Bible School production and having to explain to me that angels are also dudes despite the felt-craft imagery I'd seen to date.)
And, lo, this fall my mother declared that *all she she wanted for Christmas* was for the fam to gather and go see the movie. So, last night my folks (The Admiral and KareBear), Jamie, Steanso, Cardboard Belts and the kids all went to the theater and caught the film.
It's interesting to see a movie shaped by someone who I assume is a Christian filmmaker, one Dallas Jenkins- who directed the movie. I am utterly unfamiliar with the booming Christian movie circuit, but know it's out there and he seems to be a part of it.
I think "authenticity" is the word I'd use to describe how the book, experience and ideas are covered. The film maintains the hyperbolic world of the book that reflects a kid's memories of "how things were" (see: A Christmas Story), while also winking to the adults about what's really happening, which will bypass younger viewers and land with the adults in the audience. Example - The Herdmans are tough kids, and the idea that they're the worst kids in the world echoes the sorts of statements any adult who shared hamburgers with a 3rd grader will recognize.
Because the film takes church and a sort of familiar protestant flavor of Christianity as a given (but doesn't take it for granted) it's not especially treacly. People in the church are just people. They can be good, but also judgmental, unkind and wanting to maintain a status quo that doesn't tolerate Herdmans. The parishioners are not a monolith - it's a slice of humanity, played here with intentional diversity pulling toward a staid and conservative view.
Frankly, *if* Hollywood allows a church to show up in a movie, let alone a Christmas movie, I don't know how often Hollywood is willing to allow for their movies daring to show church goers as anything less than smiling and sort of vapid.
Rather than update the book (released in 1971) to the era of cell phones and interactive screens in churches, the film feels especially familiar as it takes place in what I take to be an era just before my own youth - the mid 70's, as the narrator grows up to be Lauren Graham - who has just a few years on me.
Its a homily of a story, and I think Dallas Jenkins and crew land it. Judy Greer was 100% the right choice to play Grace, the mom and director of the show, who both struggles with and embraces the challenges. Pete Holmes(!) shows up as the dad, a sideline observer amused by all the goings on, and who actually knows what's going on with the Herdmans. The handling of the kid actors is *phenomenal*. Molly Belle Wright is great as Beth, our POV character (who becomes Lauren Graham), and whomever Beverly Schneider is as Imogene is super talented. I was shocked. Here's hoping she keeps working.
The story is basically: A family of kids, the Herdmans, who are the scary, movie-poor and from the wrong side of the tracks, and are the terrors of a small town. They accidentally find out they can get snacks at church, and, thus, they show up for Sunday School looking for free cake (also: can relate). Finding out there are snacks, and with a passing interest in what's happening, their leader - Imogene, the eldest - decides they're going to take part in the pageant.
Along the way, the church members try to boot them out, the narrator's mother is challenged but sees the chance for grace with the Herdmans, and the Herdmans learn the meaning of Christmas. And, just as important, the Herdmans teach the church that the Christmas story - and the intention of the Jesus of the Bible - is not to shun others but welcome and embrace them. And that Christmas is perfect in its embracing of imperfect us.
Imogene's arc is *fascinating* and only 50% spoken. Her insecurities, hopes, her broken self-image... it's all right there. And what she sees in Mary, and why she wants to play her never quite gets said out loud, but it's a nice bit of filmmaking.
The naming of the Herdmans isn't just a cute nod to shepherds as part of the Christmas story - it's who gets to receive the message from an angel that Jesus is born and the world has changed. The kids of the story understandably shun the Herdsman - those kids beat them up and take their Hostess products. But the adults have written them off before they're 13. The real arc of the story bends towards that gift as the Herdmans come to the story of Christmas - the less than ideal circumstances of Mary and Joseph, the story of Herod sending the 3 Kings to find Jesus for nefarious purposes and their quiet rebellion, the gift of Jesus unto the world. They engage with the story their way, showing there's no wrong way to come to Christ - and maybe it will make people drop their notions and think about the Christmas story as more than just a series of beats we hit every year, polished and perfect.
The scene of the Herdmans in the library, doing their best to try to understand when *no adult has taken them aside to explain anything* is a remarkable bit of story-telling and a good sequence in the film.
This book - and this movie - knows what's it doing. It is a lovely story, and I'll defend it.
As with many stories like this, or A Christmas Carol, I am often left wondering if people are able to process the story and its point, and whether they think about the application of the message in their own lives. There's a clear and universal point here that is speaking broadly to all people about opening hearts and acceptance being the path to a better life for others, and a direct commentary to the faithful who hear the story and look at their own Christmas Eve service, reminding them that the point isn't the right color blue on Mary and getting home for egg nog.
The movie comments that tradition can lead to mindless repetition, to putting a shine on a story that is less than glossy, and roll over the point of the Holiday. Remembering Christ was born into the humblest of circumstances, and the Angel of the Lord spoke to shepherds, not kings, is key. And, as Beth says, Christ was born for the Herdmans, too.
We tend to think of the Christian movie circuit as conservative propaganda, with film's like God's Not Dead (a movie with a plot so outlandish, Time Bandits is grounded by comparison). I do wonder - for the folks lining up to see a movie on the proposition that it is explicitly Christian and the knowledge it may give them Christmassy feels - if they'd process this beyond "yeah, if The Dead End Kids show up at church, they can have a donut. I'm a good person."
I can't say. But it's almost Christmas and a time for new chances, right? And maybe we agree on more than we are willing to admit in ever-escalating internecine political conflict.
late edit: On the blog and when we were making the podcast, I'd often bemoan - has anyone in Hollywood ever *had* Christmas? Because the things that make up Christmas I see in so many movies - like people obsessing over some home-decorating contest - always felt like they were written by people who'd only ever seen Christmas in movies. Maybe part of why this movie got some points from me is - this is more or less how I remember the weeks leading up to Christmas growing up. A mix of church, school, calm winter quiet punctuated with anxiety of holiday events like church happenings or a school show. I don't remember a single cookie contest, a mad dash for a present, or anyone doing more than looking at the neighbors lights and saying "huh. We need to do more next year."
*As such, I was actually in many Christmas pageants - usually in the chorus due to lack of star power, culminating in narrating our church's pageant two years running in 7th and 8th grade, because my voice had dropped, I guess. This ended badly in 8th grade when I gave a "let's get ready to ruuuummmmmble!" intonation to "Price of Peeeaaaaaacce!" and was excused from duties the next year.
Jamie, by the way, as a kid was in a play of the book where she played the narrator, Beth.
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