'That Christmas' Reviews: Film "is engineered to keep the kids busy around 4 pm on Christmas Day while Mom and Dad sip their third Irish coffee in peace"

         On November 27, 2024, with a streaming release on December 4, 2024, Netflix released 'That Christmas', which has earned a mixed reception and a score of 59% on Rotten Tomatoes. "Based on the charming trilogy of children's books by beloved multi award-winning writer/director Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Love Actually, Yesterday), That Christmas follows a series of entwined tales about family and friends, love and loneliness, and Santa Claus making a big mistake, not to mention an enormous number of turkeys!" The ensemble cast includes Brian Cox, Fiona Shaw, Jodie Whittaker, Guz Khan, and Bill Nighy. But what did the critics say?

       Philip Bagnall of Next Best Picture says, “That Christmas” is engineered to keep the kids busy around 4 pm on Christmas Day while Mom and Dad sip their third Irish coffee in peace." Adding, "Richard Curtis has created his fair share of mawkish onscreen Christmas moments, but surprisingly, the creator of “Love, Actually” and “About Time” has never made a film expressly for children. He rectifies that gap in his resumé with “That Christmas,” an adaptation of three of his bestselling children’s books. The attempt to marry three barely connected stories together is just the tip of the iceberg of chaos. This adaptation is a sappy and hyper mess explicitly designed to appeal solely to younger viewers."

       Clotilde Chinnici of Loud and Clear Reviews notes, "Usually, the beauty of Christmas films is their appeal to a wide audience; they are meant to be watched by the whole family, after all. But Simon Otto’s latest movie seems to be targeting kids the most, with its child-like humour – expect at least one fart joke – and its rather straightforward plot. Very little is actually unexpected or surprising in the film: from a storyline point of view, it follows the classic structure and tropes of a Christmas tale without really adding anything for the new generation that might be watching it."

Photo by Andréa Villiers on Unsplash

       Damon Wise of Deadline Hollywood Daily praises the film, stating, "Tales of love, unrequited or otherwise, interwoven over the festive season, laden with pop songs and narrated by one of the biggest celebrities in show business, That Christmas is best viewed as a kid-friendly attempt by rom-com auteur Richard Curtis to atone for his long-standing seasonal hit Love Actually. Beautifully rendered by Simon Otto, head of character animation for the well-respected How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, it might be too busy, storywise, for younger audiences, and even rather scary towards the end, but the writer-director’s genius for dialogue is firmly on display here (an especially timorous character is afraid of infinity because “there’s just so much of it”). Adults will roll their eyes at the fart jokes; but then, kids will cringe at the sound of Ed Sheeran and Coldplay." Continuing, "Gathered up from Curtis’ short-story book of the same name, That Christmas takes place in a diverse but gentrified Suffolk seaside town that may as well be Notting-Hill-on-Sea. Taking voice-over duties from Hugh Grant is Santa Claus (Brian Cox), who looks back on four eventful days in the neighborhood following a big snowfall in the runup to Christmas Day. Like Love Actually, it features a multitude of interlocking stories and characters, but Curtis is humble enough to offer up his divisive rom-com for derision, poking fun at his 2003 film as a cheesy object of yuletide scorn (alongside Brussels sprouts and washing dishes). In that sense, the film finds Curtis, once again, having his cake and eating it, making fun of the tropes of sentimental feelgood fare (“The tradition of traditional traditions,” as one character puts it), while happily dialing them up to 11."