It was a strange path to arrive at me watching this movie. After seeing trailers, I had zero interest in going to see this Christmas movie. It looked very much like a Lifetime special and Christmas is down my list of holidays. I had pretty much decided I would not go to this.

Then I started doing the Year in Review and I realized that the only Christmas film that I had seen this year was Red One, and that was, at best, okay. It felt wrong to give it the X-Mas Movie of the Year Award so I watched an animated movie called This Christmas on Netflix. Sadly, it was just around okay too. I then looked at the Rotten Tomatoes score for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and it was at 91% critics and 97% audience. This made me wonder if I should take this basically open weekend and go see it. It was only an hour and a half. How could that be painful? So even with a doubt in my head, I went to Cinemark this morning for a 9:15 AM showing.

This was really a good movie. I liked this way more than I ever expected.

Historically, I have not been a fan of the faith-based movies, but that is not what this is. This is a movie featuring characters who are being reminded about what Christmas means to them, and how important the Christmas story can be for them. It was about characters. And it was really well done.

Based on a popular novel, we are introduced to The Herdmans, a family of six children who were the biggest troublemakers in the town of Emmanuel. They were feared by children and adults alike.

At this time, the director of the local pageant broke both of her legs, making her unable to continue to do her duties. Grace (Judy Greer) volunteered to take over the job. Unbeknownst to her, the Herdmans decided to come and join the church’s pageant (to get the snacks they were told would come with it). The Herdmans, led by the scary Imogene (Beatrice Schneider), forced their way into the main roles of the pageant, which just happened to be the 75th Annual event.

This was well written, solidly acted and had some genuine funny moments. You can’t but help to like the antics of the Holdman kids, and you can see the diamonds in the rough beneath their surface, especially Imogene. Young Beatrice Schneider does a fantastic job in the role, bringing a humanity to this character that is gruff and unappealing on the surface.

I will admit to getting kind of emotional during the film. I was amazingly impressed with the kindness and unbelievable patience shown by Grace, who could have easily bowed to city pressure and dumped the Holdmans from the play. As a teacher, I was inspired by the way she reacted to these troublesome children and watching the Holdmans respond to the play and trying to answer the questions they naturally had (by a trip to the library) was awesome to me.

You kind of knew what the film’s resolution was going to be, but it was well constructed and still managed to tug on those heartstrings. This was one of those times where predictability was not a negative.

As a Christmas movie, this is much better than much of the sentimental slop that is out there and it gives us a chance to really question if we know the true meaning of Christmas.

4 stars