Schmaltz comes for a small town in wishlist-thin That Christmas

Not even mentioning his association with Blackadder and Mr. Bean, Richard Curtis has written some of the most enduring British rom-coms of the last 30 years, ranging from Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill to Love Actually and Bridget Jones's Diary. That these abilities with slapstick stupidity, breezy wordplay, and happy-ending warmth could translate to a children’s book about Christmas seems more believable than the magic of Santa Claus. But That Christmas, which adapts Curtis and artist Rebecca Cobb’s picture book into animation, is a stingy giver. Schmaltz-heavy and wishlist-thin, That Christmas offers very little and doesn’t even have the self-awareness to include the receipt.

Discarding the endearingly scribbly style of Cobb’s illustrations in favor of a smooth cartoon realism befitting How To Train Your Dragon character lead Simon Otto (here making his directorial debut), That Christmas crumples up its source like wrapping paper. Where Cobb and her messy, minimal depiction of a clumsy Santa, a lonely snowman-builder, and a holiday lunch usurped by chaotic candy-crazed children evoked the colorful shambles of Roald Dahl illustrator Quentin Blake, Otto and his team at Locksmith Animation (Ron’s Gone Wrong) give the film a generic sheen matching its generic narrative. Low-key dramatic moments allow the elegant lighting to shine, and for some of the detailed background work to catch the eye, but a general sense of mundane mania drags the film down to its screenplay’s level.

While Brian Cox’s Scottish Santa opens the film with a “Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got into this mess,” bit of voiceover, That Christmas has little use for magic or myth. Instead, it’s a lopsided tale of a few children in the small town of Wellington-on-Sea. At the center is Danny (Jack Wisniewski), the new kid in town whose newly divorced mom (Jodie Whittaker) is always working, which leaves him in care of his crotchety teacher (Fiona Shaw). Danny’s got a crush on Sam (Zazie Hayhurst), the anxious goodie-goodie twin of troublemaker Charlie (Sienna Sayer). Also around is the ambitious Bernie (India Brown), who looks to upend Christmas traditions while her parents are away.

None of these tenuously connected stories of domestic worry or kiddie loneliness or holiday cheer ever get more than a cursory glance. That Christmas has everything seemingly squared away at the 45-minute mark, then again after it limps past an hour. Stretched taut like tangled string lights, the script can barely sustain a short film. To fill the dead air, a few musical montages kill time—most notably one set to a sappy bummer of an Ed Sheeran song. That Christmas seems to realize that it has a better grip on the heartstrings than the funny bone, at least.

Its single affecting scene involves Danny bonding with his teacher, their isolation shared and diminished over the course of a playful afternoon. As for the jokes, they’re on par with the film’s sappiest moments. The younger generation weathers a few glancing blows—ugh, these kids and their veganism, and cell phones, and feminism, and climate change!—while their hopeless parents get too much screentime. (Rhys Darby, at least, is energetic as an incessantly optimistic dad.) The film’s one fanciful aside—Santa’s single scene, repeated from the introduction—is dull and goofy; even if Santa didn’t take a nutshot, the slo-mo moment where his (naturally) high-tech sleigh zips around the rooftops is an eye-roller. Santa’s also stuck bantering with just a single reindeer (Guz Khan). Maybe there were budget cuts at the North Pole?

Santa’s thinned-out stable only underscores the barebones nature of That Christmas, the film equivalent of a last-minute Black Friday purchase thrown in a reused gift bag. The movie’s most metatextual moment takes a couple cheeky potshots at Curtis’ holiday perennial Love Actually (with embedded live-action clips), referring to the “lovely old Christmas film” as one the kids are sick of. But That Christmas falls into a classic trap: Don’t gesture towards a movie people actually like, even in a bit of tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation, when your own film has yet to prove itself. In doing so, That Christmas only invites negative comparisons: It’s just as sentimental, tonally uneven, and structurally unbalanced as Curtis’ most famous holiday smorgasbord, just banished to the kids’ table.

Director: Simon Otto

Writer: Richard Curtis, Peter Souter

Starring: Brian Cox, Fiona Shaw, Jodie Whittaker, Bill Nighy, Jack Wisniewski, Zazie Hayhurst, Sienna Sayer, India Brown

Release Date: December 4, 2024 (Netflix)