The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

I'm a dad, in my late 40s. Took my 10year old daughter to see this and we both enjoyed it. I grew up doing these plays in church. I found myself welling up at all the right places. This movie focuses on baby Jesus and the Christmas nativity story, but the emotions come from standing up for what's right and putting others first. It also tackles how the nativity story can be glossed over as a nice photo - this asks some funny questions that had me laughing out loud.

Really like the story telling structure and narrator. The child actors were great.

Originally I saw the trailer and thought it looked cheesy. I was wrong. Don't judge a book by its cover - also the point of the film.

Very happy to take my daughter to see this film and will recommend it to friends. Happy enough that a day later I'm still thinking about it and felt it needed a positive review. By comparison, I didn't have that feeling with the last 3 superhero blockbusters I saw in theatres this year.

I was parusing through IMDB hoping I would find a new Christmas movie to watch every year. I read the reviews and I was instantly curious about The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. So my wife and I went to our favorite theater to see if my hunch was correct.

The writers took the time to introduce each character so we could feel as if we were in the movie with the children.

As usual there was the obligatory mean children who made the others always on edge.

As the movie progressed we not only felt sad for the bullied kids but became intrigued as to why the mean kids were bullies.

Give the movie a chance. We did. Now it will be on our Christmas must see movie list every year. 👏👏

I really disliked the first hour or so. It try's really hard to duplicate the "Christmas Story" vibe but fails repeatedly to evoke any positive nostalgia. Also fails at humor. Everything seems very contrived and lacks any real emotion. I expect the "bad" kids to be a little over the top bad, but they should have some substance behind them. Everybody is two dimensional.

Then we get into the putting together the pageant and plenty of holes in the plot here too. But when we get to the retelling of the Christmas story I must confess that my heartstrings were pulled. There was a meaningful Christmas message that evolved from a pretty drawn out schmaltzy production. If I had turned it off after half an hour as I was tempted to do it would have gotten a 2. The last part brought it up to 7.

Some reviewers here are bashing this movie because they say it is overtly religious. Not true at all and you shouldn't listen to them. It deals with being kind to people who aren't easy to like. It centers around a play around the birth of Jesus. Hello!!!!! That is what Christmas is about. It does not in the slightest shove converting to Christianity down your throat like some have inaccurately stated.

It's a nice family friendly movie that isn't filled with adult language. If you want a feel good story with a good message then this is the movie for you. Will it win any Hollywood awards? No. It has a decent story and some scenes that made me chuckle and even tug at the heart strings a bit.

Don't listen to the naysayers. They probably prefer the blood and guts movies anyway.

A very enjoyable movie that I plan to add to my annual Christmas movie must-see list.

It's great to have a Christmas movie that is truly about Christmas, and provides moments to both laugh and cry. I had not been familiar with the story, and somewhat surprised to find that it had been around long enough to have already been turned into a TV movies 30+ years ago.

I hope this makes it onto many people's list of favorite Christmas movies. It might be the only one other than Charlie Brown's Christmas that intertwines the true meaning of Christmas with an enjoyable, amusing storyline.

Thank you, Dallas Jenkins.