98 min | PG | November 10, 2023 | Affirm Films
A teenage Mary and an awkward Joseph sing and dance their way toward the manger while Antonio Banderas vamps as a power-ballad King Herod. Adam Anders turns the Nativity into a full pop musical aimed at the family minivan. It is sincere, sugary, and exactly as silly as that sounds.
Mary is a teenager in Nazareth promised to a man she has never met. An angel tells her she will carry the son of God. Joseph is a carpenter who agreed to a marriage he did not choose. Adam Anders builds a pop musical around the Nativity, complete with dance breaks and power ballads, and aims it squarely at families who want the Christmas story with a beat. The film is really about repackaging the most retold narrative in Western culture as a teen romance, and it commits to that swing without apology.
Fiona Palomo plays Mary as a girl with ambitions beyond marriage, and she sells the songs with a clear, unstrained voice. Milo Manheim gives Joseph an awkward earnestness that fits a man stumbling into divine paternity. Antonio Banderas plays King Herod as the only adult in the room who understands the stakes, and he chews through his villain number with relish that the rest of the cast cannot match. Omid Djalili, Rizwan Manji, and Geno Segers turn the three wise men into a comic trio, mugging for laughs as they follow the star. Banderas is operating in a different register, and the gap between his menace and the surrounding sweetness is the most interesting thing on screen.
Anders directs from a script he wrote with Peter Barsocchini, and his background as a music producer shows in the construction. The songs are layered and radio-ready, mixed loud and bright, and they drive the pacing more than the dialogue does. The production design leans on warm golds and saturated blues that flatten the ancient world into a stage set. Anders cuts the musical numbers with quick coverage that keeps the choreography legible. The seams show whenever the film stops singing and has to play a scene straight.
The film knows exactly what it is and never pretends otherwise. The romance between Mary and Joseph softens the theology into something a young audience can hum along to. The treacle piles up in the ballads, and the comedy undercuts any reverence the material might earn. What saves it is conviction. Anders believes in the pop-musical frame, Banderas believes in his villainy, and that belief carries a familiar story across the finish line.