Dolly Parton can save Christmas, but not this movie
Dolly Parton’s ” Christmas on the Square,” the newest addition to Netflix’s Christmas library, tests the limits of what one can reasonably categorize as a film. There is nothing cinematic in this 98-minute musical that sounds much more fun than it is. In fact, it has the feeling and production quality of the recent spate of the live musicals that air on broadcast television and usually have an exclamation point somewhere in the title. This project is simply something else, but at least most of the people involved seem to know it.
Directed by Debbie Allen, “Christmas on the Square” is an extremely earnest endeavor with utterly sincere holiday messaging wrapped in an Old Navy scarf and soundtracked by Parton’s 14 original songs. There will be people who wince at its sincerity and schmaltz and people who love it (and trust me, you already know which camp you fall in). How can a movie where Parton spends most of her scenes bedecked in sparkly
white wares and floating atop a computer-generated cloud be all that bad? She’s an angel after all!
Unfortunately, this Scrooge found herself in the former camp.
The story follows Christine Baranski’s Regina Fuller, who has inherited the small Midwestern town she grew up in and wants to sell it to a mall developer. She walks through the titular square in stilettos and a sleek big- city bob gleefully handing out paper notices to the townspeople
as they sing and dance around. They have to be out by Christmas Eve, which comes as a huge blow. As diverse as this town is, it is also uniformly Christian and wholly consumed by the Christmas spirit. So as soon as she drives off, Pastor Christian (Josh Segarra) rallies his congregation to protest.
But Regina is undeterred and neither her best friend/ hairdresser Margeline (Jenifer Lewis, who has a showstopper of a song) nor her high school
love/antique store owner Carl ( Treat Williams) can convince her otherwise. There was an incident that happened years ago that made Regina hate and leave the town that’ll be revealed in due time. Dolly is there, though, to help nudge Regina to mercy with a few songs.
Ultimately, it’s simply hard to judge too harshly or even hate. It’s not an infectious camp fest like “Mamma Mia!” or an all-out disaster like “Cats.” It’s just Dolly’s sweet and innocent Christmas tale with sequins and revelations and it probably would have been more comfortably at home on cable. Besides, we don’t need a movie to convince us she’s an angel.