The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

Its lessons about how kindness and inclusion benefit both the giver and the receiver are welcome, but its gentle reminder to view even the oldest and best-known story with fresh attention and connection may be even more meaningful.

The film is directed by Dallas Jenkins, the creator of “The Chosen,” a long-running TV series about Jesus’ life. His tonally perfect adaptation of Barbara Robinson’s book boasts a gentle wit. He deftly conveys the movie’s message without a heavy hand.

Director Dallas Jenkins comes from the world of faith-based media, and that world is not generally known for delicacy in its messaging, so it counts as a Christmas miracle that Best Christmas Pageant generally avoids heavy-handed sermonizing.

The movie manages to provide moments of witty dialogue while moving forward with its spiritual duties.

As far as family-friendly, faith-based holiday movies go, you could do worse than “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” though it might not quite connect with all young audiences, as the film leans more toward poignant than playfully riotous.

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.

Despite the amateurish lack of comic or dramatic timing, Christmas Pageant does have some old-fashioned charm.

#TheShortHandCritic: There are those movies that are hard to find fault in because they are innocent enough to slide under the radar. That’s #TheBestChristmasPageantEver for sure. Not that there’s anything so utterly wrong with it. It’s just “missing something”. That something seems to be less processed emotions. It’s a color-by-numbers film. It wants to have a heart of gold so bad, it succeeds in being too squeaky clean. Director #DallasJenkins could have embraced being rough around the edges. You might recall the premise from the book by #BarbaraRobinson and the stage play. The town’s well-known annual Christmas pageant is in jeopardy when a group of rebel children called the Herdman’s bully their way into the show. The film anchors itself on if the pageant will succeed in being “the best” when it’s clearly already in the title—or is it we find out how it is the best? If so, the ending could have afforded to be somewhat bittersweet and not bow tying up ever character in that dumb method of clips and what-happened-to-them taglines. It is a sweet film with a good child performance by #BeatriceSchneider as the main bully Imogene. The often-irritating #JudyGreer plays the mom-turned-director of the pageant. It’s perhaps her best performance (or is it most tolerable?) A major misstep was not having #GilmoreGirls#LaurenGraham as the narrator take the larger part. It would have made the film even more endearing. There is something nice about watching a wholesome movie every now and then. This one is on the fast track to become a Holiday staple, but it doesn’t quite measure up to other classics. There’s no big-little moments of pink bunny suits or cats being roasted by Christmas lights. But as a new family-friendly film it fills the void for the time being. ️️… (Why Not It’s Christmas)+️ (Out of 4 Because 5 Stars Are For Restaurants & Hotels Only!) #FilmReview #ShortHandCritic

A simple and slow movie that takes forever to get where it's going and has all the wit and charm of roadkill. I tried for Judy Greer I really did. Unfortunately, movie isn't the right word here. It's Christian propaganda aimed at kids.