That Christmas (2024)

Richard Curtis has spent three decades perfecting the art of weaving multiple love stories into a single narrative. He did it with Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and now, with That Christmas, he applies the same formula to a CG-animated holiday film for Netflix. The result is a movie that tries to do six things at once and pulls off about four of them.

The Cast of That Christmas and Their Characters

Brian Cox voices Santa Claus, and yes, it is exactly as good as you'd hope. The man who spent four seasons growling orders as Logan Roy on Succession brings that same gravelly authority to Father Christmas, except here he's narrating bedtime stories instead of orchestrating corporate warfare. Cox's Santa isn't jolly in the usual way. He's wry, a little tired, and utterly convinced he knows best. It works.

The rest of the That Christmas cast is a roll call of top-tier British talent. Fiona Shaw plays Ms. Trapper, the no-nonsense school teacher. Jodie Whittaker voices Mrs. Williams, a single mum and overworked nurse whose son Danny (Jack Wisniewski) just wants her home for Christmas. Bill Nighy plays the town's lighthouse keeper, simply called Bill, a lonely figure who gets the film's quietest and most effective storyline. Lolly Adefope, Katherine Parkinson, and Rhys Darby round out a supporting cast that never wastes a line.

Multiple Stories, Uneven Results

The film is set in Wellington-on-Sea, a fictional English coastal town that gets hammered by an unprecedented Christmas Eve snowstorm. The blizzard traps everyone in place, and the various storylines unfold from there.

Danny's story is the emotional core. His absent father and overworked mother have left him spending Christmas alone, and when Santa accidentally delivers the wrong presents, it sets off a chain of events that forces the whole town to reckon with what they're neglecting. This thread lands. It's specific, it earns its sentiment, and Wisniewski's vocal performance is surprisingly good for a child actor.

Then there are twins Sam and Charlie (Sienna Sayer and India Brown), whose dynamic boils down to one being anxious and the other being chaotic. Their subplot about a group of kids left unsupervised while parents go to a holiday party delivers the film's best physical comedy. A child-run Christmas dinner that goes spectacularly wrong is a genuine highlight.

Where things get wobbly is in the sheer volume of storylines. Curtis can't help himself. There's a subplot about feuding neighbors. There's the lighthouse keeper's quiet grief. There's Santa's navigational mishap. The film runs 90 minutes and at times feels like it's sprinting through a checklist rather than letting any single story breathe. Love Actually managed this juggling act with two hours and adult characters whose problems were instantly legible. Animation aimed at families needs more time to set up emotional stakes, and That Christmas doesn't always give itself enough.

The That Christmas Books Behind the Film

What most viewers don't realize is that the film adapts not one but three picture books by Richard Curtis and illustrator Rebecca Cobb. That Christmas, The Empty Stocking, and Snow Day were published separately, each telling a standalone story. Screenwriter Peter Souter helped Curtis stitch them into a single narrative, and you can feel the seams.

Danny's storyline comes from The Empty Stocking. The twins' unsupervised chaos descends from Snow Day. The title book provides the framing device and Santa's role. As adaptations go, it's an ambitious way to handle children's books that were each about 32 pages long. The source material is gentle and illustrated with Cobb's soft watercolors. The film replaces that gentleness with frenetic CG energy that doesn't always match the tone of what Curtis originally wrote.

What Works and What Doesn't

Simon Otto, making his directorial debut after years as head of character animation at DreamWorks (he supervised Toothless in the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy), knows how to make animated characters move with personality. The physical comedy is first-rate. A sequence involving Santa, a GPS malfunction, and an extremely confused reindeer team is the kind of slapstick that works for every age group.

The animation itself, produced by Locksmith Animation, sits in that middle ground between Pixar polish and the flatter style of Netflix's other animated fare. Character designs lean stylized, with oversized heads and small eyes that some reviewers found off-putting. It's a valid criticism. The humans of Wellington-on-Sea look more like figurines than people, which can undercut the emotional beats.

The soundtrack, scored by John Powell and recorded at Abbey Road Studios, does heavy lifting. Ed Sheeran contributed original songs, and while that fact alone might make some viewers reach for the remote, the music works within the context of a cozy animated Christmas film. It never overwhelms.

The final act brings every storyline together in the way Curtis films always do, with coincidence and goodwill conspiring to put everyone in the right place. It's formulaic. It also works, because Curtis has been doing this long enough to know exactly which emotional buttons to press and when. The film's last ten minutes are genuinely moving, particularly Bill Nighy's lighthouse keeper finally finding company on Christmas morning.