The Xmas show must go on – sadly
Nativity Rocks! U cert, 100 min ★★★★★ Dir Debbie Isitt
Starring Simon Lipkin, Brian Bartle, Daniel Boys, Ramin Karimloo, Rupert Turnbull, Celia Imrie, Craig Revel Horwood, Anna Chancellor
Here is a festive poke in the eye for everyone who doubted that the Nativity franchise had a fourth instalment in it, not least those of us who have yet to be persuaded it even had one. Picking up the story after the events of Nativity 3: Dude, Where’s My Donkey?, this returns to St Bernadette’s in Coventry, whose pupils have yet again been Shanghaied into putting on an improbably ambitious end-of-term musical production.
The children are assisted this time by Jerry Poppy (Simon Lipkin), the long-lost brother of their last assistant, Marc Wootton’s Desmond Poppy, who has suddenly had to leave for Australia. Poppy 2.0 quickly befriends teacher Mr Johnson – played by Daniel Boys, who like Lipkin has been transferred from last year’s spin-off stage show – and also finds a friend in a young Syrian boy called Doru (Brian Bartle), who at the start of the film arrives in Britain by life raft under cover of darkness, and is separated from his father (Ramin Karimloo) as the incomers frantically pile into fruit and vegetable trucks.
Yes, Nativity is weighing in on the Syrian refugee crisis, and no, it isn’t as cringeworthy as it sounds in practice. But if you’re wondering how all of this meshes together, the short answer is it doesn’t: Debbie Isitt, the returning writer-director, continues to confuse actual amateurishness with “let’s put the show on right here!”-style underdog gumption and pluck. Yet the arrival of Lipkin heralds an interesting shift in tone, while the migration stuff has a weight Nativity has never attempted before. As has been pointed out before, it is admirable that an independent film series set in recognisable, working-class, presentday Britain, has enjoyed box office success, particularly when our national film industry is in such a precarious state. But did it have to be this?