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‘The Best Christmas Pageant Ever’ Review: Town Terrors Get Tamed in a Fresh Take on the Kid-Lit Classic
Barbara Robinson’s 1972 story of child bullies infiltrating a church nativity play provides solid family entertainment in a film by Dallas Jenkins.
Its enjoyable central conceit of Roald Dahl-style comedic nastiness — the first sentence pegs principal figures as “absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world” — no doubt explains an enduring popularity among young readers, while there’s just enough inspirational uplift by the end to earn parental approval. That equation gets reversed to a degree in this first big-screen version from Dallas Jenkins, whose Biblical-times series “The Chosen” set a high mark among faith-based entertainments for the small screen in recent years. Prior incarnations of Robinson’s story, which include a stage play and 1983 TV special (with wee Fairuza Balk a memorable Beth), tended to spring the “bad” kids’ redemption abruptly, making it seem a contrived bow to narrative convention.
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