The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, rated PG
***

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is a heart-warming and family friendly film based on the 1972 book by Barbara Robinson. The film is directed by Dallas Jenkins (The Chosen), and written by Platte F. Clark, Darin McDaniel, and Ryan M. Swanson (The Chosen). The story is narrated by the adult Beth, played by Lauren Graham.
The film opens by telling us that the six Herdman children (we never see their parents), are the worst kids in the history of the world. They are mean, they steal, lie and their sister and leader Imogene, played by Beatrice Schneider, smokes cigars. They intimidate the other local children, including stealing young Beth’s necklace, played by Molly Bell Wright,  and brother Charlie’s, played by Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez, lunch dessert three days in a row. After that, Charlie tells them that there are great desserts at church on Sunday. The Herdman children had never been to church, but they show up the next Sunday, looking for those desserts.

The Christmas Pageant is a big deal in the town of Emmanuel. This is the 75^th anniversary of the pageant, which doesn’t change from year to year, and that is the expectation for the anniversary performance. But when Mrs. Armstrong, played by Mariam Bernstein, the long-time director of the pageant falls and breaks both legs, a replacement is needed. Grace, played by Judy Greer (The Descendents), quickly volunteers for the job, even though she has no experience directing a play.
When Grace assembles the children and asks for volunteers, the Herdman children volunteer for the best parts (Mary, Joseph, the three Wise Men and the Angel of the Lord), and intimidate the other children into not volunteering. This puts Grace into a difficult position, as the Herdman children don’t even know the Christmas story. On top of that, the women of the church are upset that the Herdman children got all of the best parts in the play and demand that Grace remove them and replace them with their children.
The film includes a good deal of humor. It starts a bit slowly, but ends with a powerful scene. In between, Grace encounters a lot of challenges in pulling the play together.