A surprisingly good Christmas movie.
If you are looking for a Christian Christmas movie this season I think this is one of the better ones I’ve seen. It tells the story of how Jesus was born and the events that led up to it. The interesting thing about this film is they did take some artistic liberties, which I don’t think was a bad thing. They included some new characters like Fig the donkey and focused more on the Roman prince as a character which I thought was an interesting choice.
If you didn’t know, this movie is a musical…well it is, and a pretty good one. I found myself bopping along to most of the songs. They were also very well written. Some lyrics were very clever.
Visually it was really good as well. They tried to keep it mostly grounded in the time period. Of course, a few artistic liberties were made but it was done for effect so I thought it was fine. They also did some really cool effects by integrating the maps into the travel scenes and having them overlay the dessert. I thought that was a fun touch.
I have seen many interpretations of this story and this one had some fun with it, but still showed a lot of love and appreciation. The first half almost felt like a rom-com with Joseph and Mary having their meet-cute at the market. Then they have a falling out because they made bad first impressions. when the movie starts Mary doesn’t even want to get married which is also another big point of contention. Their scenes together I thought were really fun. I also really appreciated the wise men. I never thought of them as a comedic trio before but they were just having fun the entire movie. I was 100% there for it. I also got to give a shout-out to Gabriel the angel who was a bit nervous about giving his big speech, which was really relatable.
Overall I enjoyed it more than I thought I was going to. So, if you are looking for a Christmas movie like this. I definitely say it is one of the better ones you can watch. The trailer is below if you want to check out more or hear some of the songs.
-Jared Gomes
