That Christmas (2024)

If That Christmas had been released a decade ago, it would probably have performed modestly at the box office, sold well on DVD, gone into circulation on television and streaming, and be on its way to becoming a holiday classic. It's not reinventing the wheel, but it's the right mix of sweet, funny, and somber that makes for a fantastic experience that stays with you. This is really good stuff, with inspired voice casting and beautiful animation.

But this wasn't made a decade ago, nor was it made five years ago, when the Disney/Fox merger threw production and release plans into disarray. So, here we are in 2024, when it's become pretty common for things like this to get picked up by Netflix and subsequently forgotten. Critics aren't enthusiastic about this one, either, so it's unlikely this will get much of a boost during awards season. Hell, we'll be lucky if this ever gets a blu-ray release (though if it does you can bet your ass I'll be buying a copy).

I'm at a bit of a loss to explain why this is being received so harshly. I thought its command of tone was masterful, using the comedy to build sympathy for the characters, which makes the dramatic beats land and the payoffs feel earned. The visual style is nothing new - this resembles various Dreamworks movies first-time feature director Simon Otto worked on in other roles - but it's executed wonderfully here as a sort of exaggerated realism. This is the sort of script you'd expect to be adapted in live-action, but the movie demonstrates time and again why animation was the right call.

I'm seeing a lot of comparisons being made between this and Love Actually, largely because That Christmas is co-written by Richard Curtis and based on a series of books he wrote, and also because this shares a decentralized narrative that follows an ensemble of characters. That Christmas seems to invite these comparisons by playing a couple clips from Love Actually, which is portrayed as an old movie children find boring.

But the similarities are mostly superficial. The stories in That Christmas (of which there are really only three, though each contains enough subplots to cloud the calculation) are much more connected than those in Love Actually. In addition, there are thematic links here justifying the structure.

I'm not saying that to drag down Love Actually (I like it!), but the structures these movies use have less in common than they share. Love Actually is fundamentally a series of loosely-connected vignettes exploring different perspectives and varieties of love, while That Christmas is a movie about members of a community learning to understand and empathize with each other. Also That Christmas winds up with a character who at least feels like a central protagonist, even if this has more to do with the individual structures of the three stories comprising the film.

Before we dig into that, I want to reiterate this is a movie worth seeing. I don't know how much of an impact spoilers would have on something like this, but if you want to be safe this is where you should opt out of the review until you've had a chance to watch the film.

All right. The movie opens with a Christmas Eve sequence showing Santa Claus arriving at a small, English town in the middle of a blizzard. He'll eventually get a subplot in one of the three stories, but at this point, Santa is mostly just here to frame the movie and to establish the tone through a bit of yuletide in medias res. Really all we need to learn is that there's a lighthouse on the edge of town, things are bleak this year, and Santa's on the job.

This transitions into a flashback as Santa explains the backstory, starting with a Christmas play a few days earlier, where we're introduced to the movie's main characters, starting with Danny, a shy new kid. His parents are recently divorced, his father is supposed to be coming for the holidays but is late, and he barely sees his mother because her job has long hours. Also he has a crush on Sam...

Sam is an anxious girl who worries about everything from climate change to the turkeys at local farms to whether her identical twin sister, Charlie, will get any presents from Santa. See, despite being twins, Charlie and Sam are polar opposites: Sam is quiet and well behaved, while Charlie is outgoing and willing to pull pranks. Sam lectures her sister, but they ultimately get along and clearly love each other a great deal.

I'll get to the lead of the third story in a moment, but first... are Sam and Charlie's names references to The Long Kiss Goodnight? The main character in the 1996 Christmas action movie has two identities mirroring those names, and both films feature the actor Brian Cox (he voices Santa in this one). It could be a coincidence, but the Christmas connection alone makes me suspect it may be a nod.

The last story centers around Bernie, the girl who directs the school play and is immediately established as a natural leader. Her parents' friends are in town for the holidays, and Bernie's in charge of the kids, as well as her own younger sister, Eve.

Those characters anchor the three narratives, but - as I said earlier - there are subplots. Danny is contending with his family (his father never materializes, and his mother keeps having to work), his crush on Sam (it's mutual, though this is a much bigger part of his storyline than hers), and a rivalry turned friendship with the school's most frightening teacher, Ms. Trapper.

Trapper's an interesting character in her own right. She's introduced in a way that codes her as an antagonist, or at the very least the sort of character who needs to learn humanity. She's curt with the kids during the play, she's forceful in almost every interaction, and she forces Danny to stay in school during a snow day he accidentally shows up for, since she (correctly) deduces his mother is working. But the movie subverts this by revealing her humanity, exploring her trauma, and leveraging what initially seemed to be flaws into assets later on. She's also the one who helps Danny come to terms with his own disappointment and understand that as difficult as things are for him, they're even harder on his mother.

That's right: the woman whose job keeps her away from her kid on Christmas is viewed with empathy, rather than judgement. Her job involves caring for dying patients (in this case, the mother of the lighthouse keeper), so as much as she wants to be home, she can't ignore her responsibilities to her community. Coming to understand this sense of empathy and responsibility forms the bulk of Danny's arc.

Meanwhile, Sam is terrified that Charlie's Christmas is going to be ruined. Charlie's worried, too, but she seems to care more about how this will impact Sam's holiday than her own. In fact, pretty much everything Charlie does is for Sam, a fact revealed when Sam discovers her notes (or earlier, if the audience is paying attention). Her pranks target those who hurt Sam or things Sam cares about, up to and including releasing all the turkeys being held by a greedy local farmer (the only character in the movie who isn't ultimately redeemed by the narrative).

Basically, this is a lawful good/chaotic good dynamic, a fact Santa himself initially misses on Christmas Eve (I mentioned he had a subplot in one of these). I should note that the way the movie is structured, he intervenes in all three stories, but his involvement in the other two is pretty trivial (he gives the kids gifts they could have easily gotten some other way). But when he gets to Sam and Charlie and reviews his list, he decides Charlie's antics call for extreme measures and leaves one stocking empty.

Only it's the wrong stocking.

This is ultimately a piece of good luck, though, as Charlie wakes up at night to discover everything she could have wanted, including a wrapped guitar, at the foot of her bed. She's about to wake Sam to tell her the good news when she realizes her sister's stocking is empty. She immediately realizes the mistake and reluctantly switches the stockings, leaving the guitar with its rightful owner.

On his sleigh, Santa receives an alert, and he realizes he made an error. He turns the sleigh around, and when Charlie wakes up the next morning she discovers a stocking overflowing with gifts, including a pair of drumsticks her parents are less enthused by.

Bernie's story starts in earnest the morning of Christmas Eve, when she's left in charge as her parents and their friends head out for the day. But that's when the storm rolls in, leading to her parents becoming stranded in an (eventually overturned) van. The adults get their own comedy of errors, while the kids confront the possibility of a Christmas alone. Bernie steps up and ensures the kids have the Christmas of their dreams, untethered from the restrictions and outdated traditions of their parents.

Things take a turn, however, at the end of the evening. Little Eve wanders outside during a game of hide-and-seek and is missing when the adults finally return. It's cold, dark, and dangerously close to the sea, so a search party is assembled. The plot of this story quickly pulls in the others, as well. Among other things, this serves as a catalyst for Sam to stand up for her sister when their parents are unfair. Danny, now the owner of an ATV (Santa was VERY generous in his case), has the idea of using the lighthouse to help search, a plan which leads them to Eve hanging out with the turkeys Charlie freed earlier.

Bernie gets her reunion with her sister, as well as an improved relationship with her mother, and Danny and Sam wind up a couple. The next day, the whole town shows up for an annual Boxing Day swim, and the community is stronger than ever.

It's all very sweet, though that's anchored by both a sense of realism. The movie treats the melancholy side of the holidays as an integral part: Ms. Trapper makes the decision to spend Christmas night reminiscing about the love of her life who's no longer with her, and this is explicitly the last Christmas the lighthouse keeper gets to share with his mother. There's literal magic in this story, as well as the usual narrative coincidences, but for the most part it's very grounded and down to Earth. The kids talk and act like kids dealing with difficult obstacles, and the movie doesn't handwave away hard truths.

None of this is new, of course. At its core, this is the same tension between an idealized Christmas and a more complex reality that's dominated the genre since the 1940s. But while it's retreading familiar ground, it's doing so skillfully and effectively. This is redundant with numerous existing holiday classics, but frankly this is better than most of them.

Actually, there's one thing about this that might be new, or at the very least unusual. While his narration is present start to finish, Santa's functional role plays out around the middle. He leaves Danny the ATV, Sam and Charlie gifts that give Sam a chance to reflect on her sister's nature, and Bernie and company the tools they need to celebrate. But while these are absolutely left by a character the movie shows us is the real Santa Claus (and/or the real Father Christmas - both titles are used), they wouldn't have had to be. With very minor alterations to the story, these could have been obtained other ways. What's important isn't that they're gifts from Santa or even gifts: what matters is what the characters do with them. In a sense, Santa is superfluous to this story, which is either an issue with the script or clever storytelling, depending on your point of view. This is, after all, a movie about our responsibilities to our community and the choice to see others empathically rather than critically. Ultimately, this is less a lesson Santa teaches than one he learns when he realizes his error with Charlie. The other characters take inspiration from his gifts, but they ultimately learn it from each other, as well.

Regardless, this is a fantastic Christmas film. Aside from one talking reindeer and some ridiculous turkeys (all of which get limited screentime), the movie is far more realistic than you'd expect in this medium. I mentioned above this manages to justify that combination; I doubt that blend was easy to achieve. Don't mistake that as implying this isn't funny, however - this has numerous hilarious moments, starting with maybe the funniest visual gag I've ever seen in a nativity play. Also, I kind of love those turkeys, though the movie was wise to use them sparingly. A little Looney Toons-style antics go a long way.

In short, ignore the movie's score on Rotten Tomatoes and give this a try. It's one of the best animated movies I've seen this year, period, and it deserves much more attention than it's likely to receive.