for this week’s Tribune : NATIVITY! [1/10]

Nativity!
Director: Debbie Isitt

"If you can't say somethin' nice, don't say nothin' at all" – so advised Thumper in perennial family-favourite Bambi (1942). On that basis, the edition of you hold in your hand Tribune would carry no mention at all of this week's new release Nativity!, so wretched is this latest example of that sadly debased genre, the British comedy movie – and so astronomically unlikely is it to enjoy a tiny fraction of the Disney classic's longevity.
   But on balance we reckon it's worth breaching what some philosophers have labelled the "Thumperian principle," if only to vociferously dissuade any reader tempted to deplete their Christmas savings to take themselves – or even, given the picture's U certificate, their children – to their local multiplex in search of festive celluloid jollity. They really would be better off risking all 158 minutes of Roland Emmerich's apocalypso "carnival of bunkum" 2012 – or even Michael Haneke's remorselessly dour The White Ribbon.
   Nativity! – and can it be a coincidence that this is the second consecutive week in which a clunker arrives on our screens with an exclamation-mark zanily added to the end of the title (after Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!)? – is directed and "written by" Debbie Isitt, previously responsible for 2000's Nasty Neighbours and 2006's Confetti, the latter a mainly-improvised affair starring Martin Freeman as one of three couples competing to stage the most elaborate themed wedding.
   This follow-up again stars Freeman, is again improvised (hence the speech-marks above "written by"), and again is structured around competing groups of contestants. Here it's a pair of feuding schools in Coventry, who are determined to obtain a five-star newspaper review for their Nativity play, as judged by the local paper's waspish theatre-critic (Alan Carr.) The fact that there would be nothing stopping said critic from awarding five stars to both sets of kids doesn't seem to have occurred to Isitt – though this cavil is small beer indeed alongside the more widespread deficiencies of this misbegotten enterprise. Let's just say that having the whole sorry affair – complete with incessant raucous soundtrack and weirdly summer-bright cinematography – pivot on critics' star-ratings is a pretty decent definition of the phrase "hostage to fortune."
   This being a British film, the two groups of schoolkids concerned are (a) a posh, stuck-up, pretentious bunch from a private school and (b) a scrappy, rag-tag mob of much more slender means. The eventual triumph of the latter over the former is telegraphed from the first reel, and Isitt and company spend over 100 minutes going through the motions in depressingly uninspired fashion. Nearly every development – most notably "Hollywood" supposedly expressing an interest in the Nativity feud (actually a lie desperately cooked up by the underdogs' put-upon, Scrooge-ishly Xmas-sceptic teacher [Freeman]) – feels phoney and absurd, the silliness spiralling to unbearable levels long before the garishly O.T.T. finale.
   This sees our plucky young protagonists staging their Nativity play amid the august ruins of Coventry Cathedral – a grotesquely Americanised and sexualised affair ("A cheeky drink, a naughty wink, will loosen up our ride"), owing more to High School Musical (a crotch-grabbing angel Gabriel yelps "Shake ya ass!") than anything in the real world, that's particularly inappropriate amid such august and sombre surroundings. In this specific context, the teachers' exhortation to the insufferably precocious kids that "We're gonna tear the roof off this place!" is quite wince-inducingly tasteless.
   By this stage Rocky Tomlinson has turned up, the latest in a seemingly endless stream of "telly" faces, as the city's indubitably Scouse mayor. Why set the film in Coventry, when hardly any one in the cast seems to have a Coventry accent? Why pick such a multi-ethnic, multi-faith city for a story about nativity plays in the first place, if you aren't going to include a single line of dialogue to acknowledge the incongruity? Why go to such ridiculously extravagant and fantastical lengths in imagining outlandishly opulent festive productions, when even the most humble and humdrum nativity-play can provide – as any parent or teacher would ruefully attest – sufficient material for a delightful comedy? Why rely, when all else fails, on the charms of cute but sorely overtrained stage-school moppets as they "improv" away in search of laughs?
   The simple answer to all these questions: because it's Christmas, and whether we're talking about the pop-charts or the multiplexes, this is a time when all manner of bilge is churned out under the Yuletide flag of lazy convenience. Nativity!, even by these dire standards, is rancid turkey indeed. 

Neil Young
17th November, 2009  

written for the 25th November issue of Tribune magazine

NATIVITY! : [1/10] : UK 2009 : Debbit ISITT : 106m (BBFC) : seen 2nd October 2009, Empire cinema, Great Park, Birmingham (press show – 62nd CinemaDays event). [2/28]