Overview
It's an unforgettable Christmas for the townsfolk of Wellington-on-Sea when the worst snowstorm in history alters everyone's plans — including Santa's.
Based on Richard Curtis’ trilogy of festive tales, That Christmas and Other Stories, the screenplay adapted for the screen by Curits himself, this animated offering from Netflix tells multiple tales about a small town beset by blizzard conditions, and the people within it. With personal stories intertwined that cover family matters, loneliness, community spirit, and the morality of “bad” versus “good” when it comes to perception of actions, this is pretty familiar ground for Curtis to play in, only more aimed towards younger crowds than he usual work.
Simon Otto is on direction duties, having cut his teeth as an animator on many Dreamworks animations over the last two decades, before delivering episodes of recent animated shows including The Tall Grass entry into Love, Death and Robots, and he does a decent job with it, although the animation style feels a little lacking at times, with a simplistic approach rather than the hyper realism we’ve come to see from other studios. But the simple style does capture the traditional festive tales well enough, so isn’t an issue.
However, the film does suffer from feeling a little disjointed and padded out – a result of combining the multiple narratives into one tale, leaving you wondering if these would have worked better as separate short animations instead. Cutting between the narratives sadly breaks some of the connections within, never allowing you to really care for some of the characters and their stories.
The end result is rather underwhelming unfortunately, despite the solid voice cast inhabiting the characters, and once the end credits have rolled there’s barely a lasting memory of what the tales were trying to tell. A far drop from prior year Netflix festive animated offerings, and more telling of how Curtis’ storytelling doesn’t resonate with the same charm as it used to.