Like a John Lewis Christmas ad directed by Satan, the third Nativity movie has arrived on our screens. This is one of those British family comedies that make you want to soil the Union flag with your own faeces in the cinema foyer before setting fire to it.
After two previous outings, the Nativity franchise has lost whatever daft charm it had; it manages to be infantile without being childlike, with something imperishably crass in the writing and staging. Now it’s Martin Clunes playing the teacher figure (the role successively taken by Martin Freeman and David Tennant in the first two films); Christmas comes and he is in love with Catherine Tate who is in New York, but then he – oh, who cares what he does?
This wouldn’t get on CBeebies, and is shot in an ugly, garish style. Marc Wootton’s comedy turn as the wacky teaching assistant Mr Poppy is (I concede) reasonable, but the film’s unfunny “family values” imperative means he can never really let rip. Inflicting this on children at any time is cruel. But Christmas?
