(courtesy Twitter / X)
If there’s one trend emerging in this year’s crop of streaming Christmas releases – this is quite apart from the usual Hallmark etc romcoms which exist in blissfully trope-heavy world of their own – it’s that the writers and producers have taken a look at what’s come down the festive entertainment pike before and decided to go waaaaaay out from the norm.
And by waaaaaay out, I give you both Candy Cane Lane which gives us a psychotically evil elf, weirdly inert Santa and some allusions to Christian theology (I kid you not) and today’s candidate, The Naughty Nine which delivers up some kids on the Naughty List who decide that they’re not going to take the non-appearance of their presents lying down (they don’t even get coal) and they’re going to Ocean’s Eleven the heck out of the North Pole.
Pretty much confirming why they are on the Naughty List in the first place, Andy Steele (Winslow Fegley from Lyle, Lyle Crocodile) and his bestie Dulce Gutierrez (Camila Rodriguez) decide that they are going to strike back at the jolly man in red, infiltrate his high-tech, high-security premises and get the toys and gadgets that as far as they are concerned belong fairly and squarely to them.
Leaving aside the dubious ethics of this, and to be fair, the Nice and Naughty Lists do rest, weird though they are, on a fairly moral basis, what makes this adventure to the North Pole so different to the vast array of preceding stories like it is that these kids are actually a fairly unrepentant bunch of self-serving little narcissists.
The Naughty Nine does attempt to soften these kids unrepentant hard edges by injecting some geeky playfulness to characters like Lewis Sobong (Anthony Joo) who’s essentially a festive conspiracy theorist who’s tech prowess has seen him crack the Naughty List code and track the whereabouts of the North Pole, and Albert Reyes (Ayden Elijah) who’s so cute he gets what he wants just by making adorable faces, and while that’s fun, it’s doesn’t take away from the fact these kids are not that nice.
Granted, the film is aimed fairly at a younger demo than this reviewer, and kids will likely love how the protagonists – eight kids and one inept pilot called Bruno (Derek Theler) – decide to deal with the perceived injustices of Christmas in their own weirdly empowered way,
In that respect, it is a lot of fun and the world-building that goes into realising a very cool North Pole and the way this Santa (Danny Glover) operates is pretty impressive, lending the film a freshness and newness that you don’t get in many festive films which tend to follow the same well-worn path.
So points to The Naughty Nine at least for being inventively imaginative and not simply regurgitating the same-old, same-old, either visually or narratively.
Where it falls down is in the fact that even with all the imaginative buoyancy at work, and an ending that shoehorns in a till-then redemptive arc at the very last minute, The Naughty Nine doesn’t feel all that warm and Christmassy.
So much time is invested in the heist side of things, which as you expect in these sorts of films doesn’t go even remotely according to plan, that the warmhearted finish, when it does arrive, feels a little too lacking in holiday spirit and redemptive verve.
It’s not enough to have the kids grow and change; they have to do it with some sort of decent arc, but what happens in The Naughty Nine is that the naughty side of things gets so much time – and fair enough, the way it’s executed is full of fun and daring bravado and fits the vivacious silliness of many a festive film – that the end gooey bits where Andy selflessly sacrifices himself for the greater good feels a little to late to the end of year party and a tad too rushed.
Now, not every Christmas movie has to be dripping in warm and treacly sentiment but the genre is pretty addicted to the bad-go-good sentiment and when you sit down to watch a film like The Naughty Nine you’re happy with anything fun and original they throw your way as long as the ending ticks that feel-good festive box.
The Naughty Nine does go some way to doing that and the way that Andy does change makes you feel good about the world, but it’s all so last-minute and so half-done, that while you lean into the redemptive bonhomie that’s there because what sort of Scrooge would you be if you didn’t, it’s so brief and so tacked on that it really doesn’t lend with much emotional weight.
And yes, even kids’ Christmas films should land some sort of noticeable emotional punch.
The bottom line with The Naughty Nine is that if you’re a kid or you have a kid, there’s enough buoyant fun and spirit in The Naughty Nine to see you through and to make you feel as if a sometimes unjust time of the year might have the capacity for some self-initiated justice correcting.
If as a kid you ever felt like things just weren’t fair, and you didn’t get what you deserved, you and your kids will likely have a ball with The Naughty Nine; even so, the characters feel a little too unlikeable for too long and you end up feeling much like Andy’s sister Laurel (Madilyn Kellam) who’s furious at how her smart and charming brother hoodwinks everyone from teachers to parents and gets away with all kinds of things.
Bravo for The Naughty Nine going all out with a really creative and enjoyable approach to Christmas storytelling that feels like a breath of fresh air in some respects but while it’s imaginative and clever and full of retributive fun, it doesn’t quite nail the feel-good landing and leaves you feeling like Santa should have taken a far harder line with them and made them suffer for their festive “sins”.
But still, where’s the fun in that, I guess?
The Naughty Nine streams on Disney+