My Review

The Town that Cancelled Christmas ***

For many years now, the Christmas movie has been a frequent staple in cinemas during the holiday season with every year bringing us a new festive cinematic delight and some films that will likely be remembered as true classics for a long time to come. Over the past few years, however, there have been a few such films that have failed to really inspire audiences and despite having extremely big production budgets have really failed to wow moviegoers. ‘The Town that Cancelled Christmas’ couldn’t be much further removed from such films. Made for a paltry (by Hollywood standards at least) $200,000, this is a film that was made back in 2006 and due to backing by a distributor found itself shelved for a couple of years. Now it has finally been released, albeit only on DVD, and what we have here is a film that more than holds it own against its closest Hollywood competitor, the 2006 Danny DeVito/Matthew Broderick starrer ‘Deck the Halls’ and shows that it is possible to make an enjoyable Christmas film without a huge budget.
Norbert Bridges (Matt McCoy) is a teacher who has taken time out to write a book entitled ‘A Merry Little Christmas’. The subject of the book is human behaviour during the holidays, and his work has seen he and his family move from town to town as his work repeatedly creates a mess that forces them to move on. And it appears that he is about to repeat this once again when he hears about the annual Christmas decorating contest in the town of Greenlawn, where he and his family have just moved to. Neighbour Donnie Manning (Adam Ferrara) has run the competition for several years running and when Norbert sneakily goads him into a fanatical “must win” mentality in order to observe his reactions so that he can continue researching his book, things start going very wrong in the neighbourhood, as Donnie obsessively attempts to come up with the best Christmas display to the dismay of his neighbours. Caught in the middle, are Norbert’s son Kevin (Hunter Gomez) and Donnie’s daughter Holly (Christa B. Allen), who form a special friendship but find it at risk as their parents’ rivalry grows out of hand. When the actions of Norbert and Donnie ruin the Christmas festival, the town decides that the only option is to ban Christmas. With Kevin and Holly apparently the only ones who recognise what the true spirit of Christmas is, Norbert and Donnie realise that they must put aside their differences to save the holiday once and for all.
From the outset, it is clear that ‘The Town that Cancelled Christmas’ is a very low budget film. It was clearly shot on video rather than celluloid and as such the picture quality isn’t very high and it almost looks as if it was shot entirely on a regular camcorder. As such, many would no doubt dismiss it as the work of an amateur filmmaker, but this would be somewhat unfair considering the budget the production team had to work with. The low budget also shows in the lack of the grand sets and costumes that many big budget Christmas movies tend to have, but this is a film about a small town and as such what we see is at least realistic. Instead of grand spectacle, however, the charm of the film comes from the characters and the lessons that they learn. After all, this really is a film with a message to put across and whilst the ‘love conquers all’ message may not be anything particularly new or original it is still put across very well nonetheless. Also, while the film isn’t exactly hilarious it does have some glimpses of humour that will raise a chuckle or two. Largely, the acting isn’t up to much with Matt McCoy making for a very unconvincing academic type and many of the film’s cast members not really being given a lot of actual acting to do but there are a few who stand out from the rest. Adam Ferrara, who has already moved onto bigger and better things, delivers a very amusing performance, but it is the younger actors who really steal the show. Up-and-coming stars Christa B. Allen (whose name is listed as Christina in the opening credits for some reason) and Hunter Gomez are the real stars here with their romantic subplot turning a potentially dull film into a very sweet and heart-warming one. They have a good chemistry and both deliver extremely likeable performances. Both should have bright futures ahead of them, with Christa B. Allen, in particular, already on the path to a successful acting career. All in all, this film certainly isn’t one of the best Christmas movies you will ever see and the concept is wasted, only coming to effect near the end and being resolved far too quickly, but it is still has qualities that make it worth giving a go. While it is unlikely that ‘The Town that Cancelled Christmas’ will ever be considered a classic (or that it will ever actually be seen by that many people), it is a film that has a certain charm that makes it well worth checking out, and if like Christmas movies and can find a copy of this film I would recommend that you do.