That christmas

             

          That Christmas

           

It’s been two decades since Love Actually rewrote the Christmas movie playbook,

predominantly by exhausting it.

If you’ve ever wondered what an infantilisation of the interconnectivity conceit would look lik

 

Netflix’s That Christmas has the answer.

The film is Richard Curtis’ second festive offering in as many years, following 2023’s Genie, and, well, it’s fine. Colourful, innocuous, mildly diverting…pick your bland adjective and damn with faint praise at leisure.

Based on Curtis’ own picture book, “That Christmas and Other Stories,” the film is the craft of Locksmith Animation, the still burgeoning studio behind 2021’s similarly anodyne Ron’s Gone Wrong. The house style leans closest to a budget Illumination, falling somewhat short of Rebecca Cobb’s livelier illustrations for the book, and lacking the soul and humanity of Pixar. A move to convey the story’s cold weather by rendering the cheeks of the film’s youngster cohort rouge had, meanwhile, the unfortunate side effect of making each like they have just been slapped by some disciplinarian parent. No such cruelty really exists in this world.