Aisha Tukur
As we hurtle towards Mariah Carey’s most lucrative holiday, families all over the UK will be pressing play on Christmas films such as Love Actually to get themselves into the festive spirit.
The 2003 movie was one of a string of hits from writer-director Richard Curtis which dominated the box office at the turn of the millennium, alongside Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary and Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Curtis is returning to the Christmas theme for his latest film, but this time around he has moved away from the traditional romcom and taken on his first animated project.
“The thing for me is, it’s been a long time since I was, as it were, on the dating market,” he tells BBC News. “But I’ve been a dad for the last 25 years, so it was a real joy for me to be able to write about kids.”
The film-maker has described working on animation as “a huge treat and revelation for me”, adding that the “whole process is so different from the other movies I’ve worked on”.
That Christmas, released on Netflix on 4 December, is adapted from the book of short stories Curtis published in 2021.
Set in the fictional coastal town of Wellington-on-Sea, the film follows a handful of families gearing up for Christmas Day. When a blizzard hits the town and leaves the parents separated from the children, their carefully planned celebrations are thrown into chaos.
The theme of Christmas gone wrong was highly relatable to Swiss director Simon Otto, who has previously worked as an animator on How to Train Your Dragon and Enchanted.
“I know from my own family growing up, we had such a clear idea of the timeline of how Christmas or any tradition will unfold,” he tells BBC News.
“And I can count more times where it didn’t happen the way you expect and somehow something got messed up.
“We all have a Christmas memory where something goes wrong, those are the Christmases you remember the most, and at the end of that experience you always feel like, ‘My god, we were able to be together for this time, and the realisation that that’s what it’s really all about.”
He adds: “I thought there was a beautiful poetry in that which we really wanted to bring out in the film, and make it as familiar to people as we can, but also contemporary and real.”
The 90-minute film features the voices of Curtis regulars such as Bill Nighy, alongside Fiona Shaw, Jodie Whittaker, Lolly Adefope and Brian Cox as Santa Claus.
That Christmas premiered at the London Film Festival in October, where it received broadly positive reviews from critics.
“It can be easy to sneer at the arrival of a new Christmas movie,” noted the Hollywood Reporter’s Lovia Gyarkye.
“Genuine holiday cheer is tough to conjure and, if you’re not the intended audience for Hallmark-type saccharinity, the festive fare likely inspires more exasperation than joy.
“But this one slyly avoids the usual mawkishness by grounding its whimsical story in the real and prickly emotions of life.”
Next Best Picture’s Philip Bagnall suggested the film is “engineered to keep the kids busy around 4pm on Christmas Day while mum and dad sip their third Irish coffee in peace”.
“This is unlikely to become a festive classic,” cautioned Screen Daily’s Wendy Ide. “But the message is a persuasive one: that Christmas comes in many shapes and forms and, ultimately, the only holiday tradition that is non-negotiable is goodwill to all.”
