Dolly Parton’s Christmas On the Square

Christmas on the Square lets the viewer kick back and indulge in all things Parton.

This is an unabashedly sentimental, family-friendly mashup of “A Christmas Carol” with “It’s a Wonderful Life,” sure to leave you smiling and maybe even a little teary-eyed.

Part cheesy Hallmark movie, part community-theater production, part A Christmas Carol meets It’s a Wonderful Life, the special is a mosaic of holiday tropes — and that’s a good thing. The acting is over-the-top, and the plotline has as much subtlety as Dolly’s bedazzled platform boots, but its larger-than-life theatrical nature makes it even more enjoyable.

It’s bad, the sort of bad that knows what it is — campy rather than camp. “Campy” is camp with a diploma and a martini. And “Christmas on the Square” is a drunk.

Christmas on the Square isn’t much, but what’s here is a pleasant enough time-killer, which is more than you can say about the vast majority of holiday-themed Hallmark/Hulu/Netflix et al fare this season.

So sickeningly sweet dentists should show it in their waiting rooms to ensure business, the film just isn’t very good, even by treacly holiday film standards.

Christmas on the Square is pure, studio-lot fantasy and not really trying to be anything else.