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This week at the Tryon Theatre is “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” the first film to kick off our holiday programming. This film is based on the identically titled best-selling book, which received great praise for its message and family-friendly fun. The film adaptation of the story is no different from its literary inspiration, providing a charmingly silly, sweet, and cheerful film, celebrating the holidays and the charitable spirit associated with them. 

The film centers on a parish’s annual Christmas pageant, a tradition marked by piety and respectability. It focuses on two families: the Bradleys and the Herdmans. The Bradleys are a relatively well-liked family in their church community, while the Herdmans are well-known troublemakers with a reputation that concerns many of the parish. This year, Grace Bradley, the mother of the family, signed up to spearhead the annual pageant, much to the chagrin of her family. 

The social pressures of successfully pulling off the pageant are high stakes for the Bradleys, which are threatened only more by the Herdmans intrusive inclusion in the pageant. 

“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” explores Christmas’s more explicitly Christian themes, doing so with kindness and sincerity, but nonetheless directly in its religious message. It packages its messages in a cinematic product that is competent in its own right, not using its message as a crutch but rather as an organic extension of its story. For any viewer who seeks only distractive entertainment from their holiday programming, this particular entry may not scratch the perfect itch. However, the potential audience members who prefer their holiday films also to contain a lesson of spirituality or morality will likely find themselves satisfied with this wholesomely goofy film.

Like most cinematic holiday fare, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” is not a groundbreaking work of art. The simplicity of such a film is simultaneously the quality that provides its accessibility. Films like this are especially popular during the holidays because we seek the emotion of comfort and reinforcement of what we know to be good and kind. 

Much like a cup of hot cocoa, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” is a satisfyingly sweet, easy, and warm dose of holiday cheer. For any filmgoer in search of some goofy, fun, and moralistic Christmas spirit, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” should prove a good time!