The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (2024)
The small town of Emmanuel has put on the same Christmas pageant for seventy-five years. The kids stand in the same places. The same kids play the same parts every year. It’s always the same, and the town likes it that way.
When Mrs. Armstrong, the lady who always manages the pageant, breaks both her legs, she hands her director’s chair and her comp book full of notes over to the protagonist, Beth’s mother, Grace. Other mothers in the church look askance at this new development, predicting disaster.
Grace is optimistic, however. “It’ll be the best Christmas pageant ever,” she says.
FYI, the title of the film is said four times throughout The Best Christmas Pageant Ever’s running time. It’s inevitable, I guess.
Anyway, enter the Herdmans, the worst kids in town. They bully, steal, commit arson, swear, cuss out the teachers, and smoke cigars. They’ve come to church because Beth’s brother, Charlie told them he gets mondo amounts of junk food and sweets and they want in on it.
When the young hoodlums find out that’s not the case, they decide to bail. Well, at least until the pageant is announced, and then they snag all the big parts, much to the horror of almost everyone except Grace. The youngest Herdman, Gladys, who’s like a cross between Harpo Marx and the Bride of Chucky, is even going to play the part of the angel. The church kids would challenge them but they’re scared because no one wants to bring down the wrath of the Herdmans.
As it is, though, no one can predict what will happen the night of the pageant. None of the Herdmans have ever read the Bible or know anything about Christmas, so the big question is what these wild children are going to do with a story every churchgoer knows by heart.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is based on the 1972 children’s classic by Barbara Robinson, and while the story has been a play and a 1983 TV special starring Loretta Swit and Fairuza Balk, it’s never been a feature film.
Personally, I wondered how it would work as a feature, because the novel isn’t terribly lengthy or the plot terribly meaty, plus there’s not much question where things end up. Certain things about the novel, such as the teachers passing the Herdman kids every year just to be rid of them, would elicit gasps from certain audience members nowadays. The fact that the novel is based around activities at a local church doesn’t go over so well with some, either, although the story isn’t preachy in the slightest.
I wondered if I’d have anything to say about it because I reviewed the novel about four years ago (read the review here) and this new feature doesn’t stray from its source material all that much apart from a little bit of filler.
As it is, though, Pageant is an unfailingly cute movie. Sure, it’s not on the level of Edward Scissorhands or A Christmas Carol, but it’s warmhearted and fun, with Lauren Graham as an older Beth narrating the story. It’s refreshing to see a family film not laced with jokes about bodily functions or some hapless character bodyslamming against a door or a window. Or stuck in a vending machine.
It’s also nice to see a Christmas movie that doesn’t involve some jaded city-dweller going back to their hometown, reuniting their high school crush, and stepping up to the plate when some fixture of the town needs urgent attention. Nothing against those movies, of course, but after a while that formula feels like empty calories—heady in the moment but forgettable.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever flies in the face of those types of movies, as it’s a story about families, a Norman Rockwell-worthy town, and why we celebrate Christmas. I hope it becomes its own kind of classic.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is currently in theaters. Rated PG.
My grade: B+
Principal Cast: Molly Belle Wright, Kynlee Heiman, Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez, Judy Greer, Pete Holmes, Stanley Arches, Vanessa Benavente, Mariam Bernstein, Kamal Chioua, Beatrice Schneider, Sara Constible, Mason D. Nelligan, Matthew Lamb, Joshua Downes, Ewan Wood, Zoe Fish, Essek Moore, Donna Fletcher, Nolan Grantham, Lauren Graham.
Directed by Dallas Jenkins.
Written by Platte F. Clark, Darin McDaniel, Ryan Swanson, and Barbara Robinson (novel)