That Christmas (2024) Review: This Otherwise Familiar Animated Christmas Tale Belongs on Santa’s Nice List
“Wrap up warm and get ready for That Christmas.” And so it begins with an extended flashback for the next 40 minutes as Santa’s (voiced by Brian Cox) voiceover narration recounting everything that goes wrong at the fictional idyllic English town of Wellington-on-Sea. It all started on December 22nd with a cheeky Christmas-themed school play titled “The Three Wise Women”, complete with a live piano rendition of Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” and Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” playing in the background.
The story, which is adapted from Richard Curtis’ children’s book trilogy That Christmas and Other Stories, has three tales interconnecting each other. We are introduced to the shy and socially awkward Danny (Jack Wisniewski), who has a long crush on his classmate Sam (Zazie Hayhurst) but lacks the guts to confess his feelings to her. Back home, his nurse-mother (Jodie Whittaker) is always busy at the hospital around the clock while his father is nowhere in sight.
When a snow day forces the school to close, Danny turns out to be the only one who doesn’t get the message. This leads to a forced one-on-one class session with his crusty teacher Miss Trapper (a scene-stealing Fiona Shaw). Later, we see Miss Trapper showing Danny how to build a snowman as part of the practical physics lesson — a bittersweet moment of how two unlikely individuals — one’s a reserved boy and the other’s a stern, yet uptight but lonely teacher — inadvertently spend their time in a snow-building activity together. Their subsequent friendship in the story is easily the best part of the movie and I enjoy watching the mismatched chemistry between Jack Wisniewski’s Danny and Fiona Shaw’s Miss Trapper.
Sam, in the meantime, occasionally has to put up with her mischievous twin sister Charlie (Sienna Sayer). The latter worries that Charlie’s constant pranking and other delinquent acts will put her on top of Santa’s naughty list for not getting any presents on Christmas morning. Then, there’s rebellious Bernadette (India Brown) along with her little sister Evie (Bronte Smith) hanging out with their friends as all of their parents are out of town to attend a wedding. They are supposed to be back before Christmas but the blizzard has forced the town to close the road, not to mention there’s no ferry operating at the time, leaving the parents completely stranded.
That Christmas may have been busy with all the different characters and intertwined storylines, which I’m afraid it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Thankfully, this isn’t the case here as Simon Otto, who cut his teeth as an animator for movies like How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, Shark Tale and Bee Movie in his feature-length directorial debut, does a better-than-expected job juggling multiple characters and stories without losing focus on them. The Santa story itself is equally worth mentioning here, notably his chemistry with the condescending reindeer (Guz Khan, in a worthy comic relief) who starts to grow tired of pulling the sleigh.
Otto also keeps a brisk pace throughout the movie with a charming animation style that may have been nothing groundbreaking but good enough for what it is. Richard Curtis, who co-adapted his own book trilogy along with Peter Souter, fills the story with all the tried-and-tested Christmas themes of family, friendship, love, loneliness and the magical spirit of the festive holiday season.
And yet, the otherwise all-too-familiar storyline works well for most parts of the movie except for the ending that somehow wraps up everything too conveniently for its own good. But the overall funny yet heartwarming tale, coupled with Otto’s pacey direction and delightful voice cast all around, That Christmas deserves its place as one of the best animated features that I have seen this year.
That Christmas is currently streaming on Netflix.
