Back from seeing The Best Christmas Pageant Ever movie

"HEY!  UNTO YOU A CHILD IS BORN!!!"

I needed to see this movie right now. 

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is a story near and dear to my heart.  I played the head firefighter in two productions of the stage play for Theatre Guild of Rockingham County.  That was years ago and I still  have very fond memories of  those shows.  So I was curious about how this new adaptation, directed by Dallas Jenkins, would be.

This new film (there was a television movie back in the early Eighties, so this is the second time that The Best Christmas Pageant Ever has been formatted for the screen) pretty much follows the plot of the original novel.  The Herdmans, AKA "The worst kids in the history of the world" are the juvenile blight upon the whole town.  But a series of events leads to them not only coming to church one Sunday morning, but also demanding to be in the annual Christmas pageant.  The uppity church folks want nothing to do with the Herdmans.  But as the story progresses we find that the Herdmans maybe "get" the Christmas story better than some ever do.  This is a story that is both heartfelt and hilarious.  A perfect holiday tale out of the Seventies.

I thought the movie was great, although maybe a bit slow-going at first.  I was expecting more "nasty" from the Herdman kids, but what is shown in the movie is pretty much in keeping with their depiction in Barbara Robinson's book.  This is a story more than fifty years old and what seems tame today was no doubt quite shocking then.  So my expectations were biased, through the lens of modern sensibilities (if only we could go back to that more innocent America).  It's a well-cast film, especially the child actors.

I saw it with a pretty large audience for a holiday movie that's not necessarily a "tent-pole" spectacle.  Obviously most of the people at the theater today were there to see Wicked (a film I'm hearing only crazy good about) but in the showing I caught there was still a substantial crowd.  I did notice that I was the only single person, unaccompanied by anyone else, at the showing.  But that's okay.  This story is a part of my life and I was going to be there for that sake.

Is The Best Christmas Pageant Ever on the level of a true holiday classic film?  I'll say it has potential for that.  This is the kind of Christmas movie that there isn't made much of anymore.  You know, films like A Christmas Story, and even National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.  I can see this movie becoming something families enjoy together every year about this time.  Hey, it took a long time for A Christmas Story to come around to the level of holiday tradition, too.  I think this movie can make that list, too.

Anyhoo, after all the craziness my life has had lately, my brain very much needed something sweet and endearing and comical to distract itself with.  And that is just what The Best Christmas Pageant Ever delivered.  I'll give it three stars out of five.