(courtesy IMP Awards)
As a child of the Church (thought failed, ultimately, to stick in childhood), it’s always fascinated this reviewer how something as pure as belief in the goodness of a higher power, which should always elevate and enliven can somehow become a tool for oppressive, punitive religious expression.
If you have been at the wrong end of it, and really, is there a right end with the perpetrators never seemingly to crack a smile or indicate the smallest bit of enjoyment in life, you’ll know what that kind of behaviour entails and you will likely have mused, as all victims of virtuously-situated intolerance do, how something like the Gospel can become weaponised and dangerous.
And if you have so mused, you will also have wondered what could possibly take this wall of piously-placed hate down, if it’s even possible to prevail against scorn and hatred which, somehow, pivots from a story of love with very dark consequences?
In The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, based on the 1972 book of the same name by Barbara Robinson, you have your answer; well, at least, the fantasy version which opines that the shock of the status quo being upset by an uncontrollable, unapproved force, is just the thing to turn hard hearts at least somewhat malleable.
A wholesome family film with a wickedly funny sense of humour, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, with production backing from religious sources, is clearly meant to be an advertisement for the true meaning of Christmas, something that many Christians lament, with almost annoying frequency, is missing from the modern celebration of the day.
Be that as it may, what the film does is not much elevate the religious meaning of Christmas, though that does happen clearly and strongly, but beautifully and actually quite affectingly promote the idea that inclusion and acceptance and unconditional community, with no strings attached and no hoops requiring jumping through, is not possible but transformative.
In the town of Emmanuel, which, yes, for those Biblical scholars and survivors of institutional church, means “God with us” – subtlety is not the film’s strong suit; thankfully in the hands of writers Ryan Swanson, Platte Clark and Darin McDaniel, it doesn’t prove fatal with enough charm and fun to counteract it – the Herdman siblings are feared and reviled in equal measure.
These six feral kids, who live in a rundown house on the very worst side of the tracks, survive on their own recognisance, their parents never seen with parental oversight, such as it is, provided by eldest child, Imogene Herdman (Beatrice Schneider) who is as hard and tough as they come.
She and her siblings- Ralph Herdman (Mason D. Nelligan), Claude Herdman (Matthew Lamb), Leroy Herdman (Ewan Wood), Ollie Herdman (Essek Moore) and Gladys Herdman (Kynlee Heiman) – terrorise the adults and kids of the town, most notably at school which by some miracle they routinely attend.
Chief among their targets are sister and brother, Beth and Charlie Bradley (Molly Belle Wright and Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez respectively), who lose necklaces and lunchtime desserts to the Herdmans, of whom it is said, no good can come.
But then a series of events mean that the town’s much-loved Christmas pageant, overseen usually by the fearsomely unimaginative Mrs Armstrong (Mariam Bernstein), falls into the producing hands of Beth and Charlie’s mum, Grace (Judy Greer), who abhors the clique that runs the church and who fundamentally rejects their judgement-filled version of Christianity.
Still, even she is unsure of what to do when the Herdmans, encouraged by Charlie’s ill-advised talking up of the snacks you can get at church, turn up to the pageant planning session, where roles are allocated and the rehearsal process started, and take over all the main roles through their trademark fear and intimidation.
Suddenly, the cosy, often toxic, bubble of “churchianity” (as opposed to actual Christianity) that has long sustained the likes of Mrs Armstrong, Mrs. Wendelken (Danielle Hoetmer) and Mrs Slocum (Sarah Constible) and others who exists only in lemon-faced, venomously hateful form, is burst and everyone has to deal with a scenario where the very people the Gospel talks about are actually in the room and have to be taken into account.
What, on earth, will everyone due when their faith actually has to do something and not simply be religious catchphrases and empty gestures?
Well, in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which somehow manages to retain some real humanity and emotional groundedness – not always hallmarks of faith-based movies which present an unreachable ideal that takes no notice of the realities of being human – they hang on, highly amusingly much of the time, for dear life.
And in so doing, everyone, and yes, we mean everyone, end up being delightfully transformed.
While it’s highly unlikely that this transformation will stick in the long-term with the likes of Armstrong, Slocum and the Stasi-like Wendelken, for one moment in a pageant that is celebrating and which finally, quite movingly, actually celebrates the inclusive love at the centre of its messaging, everyone finds themselves face-to-face with what it means to step outside their comfort zone of belief and to actually live the ideas they claim to hold so dear.
MVPs here are Wright and Schneider who, as Beth and Imogene, formerly enemies and now weirdly enough, friends of a sort, really drive home the power of actually loving people are they are and not presenting them with a list of demands in order to be accepted and loved.
Schneider, in particular, absolutely knocks it out of the park as she exhibits a touching vulnerability which beautifully illustrates that if you just give people a chance, and let them be themselves without condition, that they might find their own kind of redemption, healing and belief all on their own (and with the help of a metric ton of library books on everything from Christianity to the history of the Roman Empire).
A faith-based film that actually challenges the institutional orthodoxy that sits at the heart of some of Christian expression, and which puts off so many people with its harshly condemning and wholly unwelcoming vibe, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is a lot of sweet fun, pushing the story of the Gospels yes, as you’d expect it to do, but doing so in a way that isn often hilarious, frequently moving, and above all, alive with hope, possibility and a grounded humanity which believes the best way to express love is to meet people where they are and take it from there, no strings attached and with hearts open.