‘The Best Christmas Pageant Ever’ Review: Hey! Unto You a Great Christmas Movie Is Born!

Judy Greer and Pete Holmes star in a smart, funny, impressive adaptation of the classic holiday book

A woman leans her head on a man's shoulder as they sit on a stoop, snow gently pouring down.
Pete Holmes and Judy Greer in "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever."

If there’s one thing the world needs, it’s yet another Christmas movie. That probably sounds sarcastic, but I mean it. The endless deluge of Christmas films, year after year, has watered the holiday down into a genial but middling medley of cozy trappings and tropes. The Hallmark Channel bears a lot of the blame for this, pumping out hundreds of blandly reassuring holiday films in rapid succession, all with the same four or five plots and (slightly) different casting.

Ironically, this overwhelming wave of (hopefully) well-intentioned Christmas movies has led to a situation not unlike the one found in “A Charlie Brown Christmas Special.”

Comments