★★★

It’s been two decades since Love Actually rewrote the Christmas movie playbook, predominantly by exhausting it. If you’ve ever wondered what an infantilisation of the interconnectivity conceit would look like, Netflix’s That Christmas has the answer. The film is Richard Curtis’ second festive offering in as many years, following 2023’s Genie, and, well, it’s fine. Colourful, innocuous, mildly diverting…pick your bland adjective and damn with faint praise at leisure.

Based on Curtis’ own picture book, “That Christmas and Other Stories,” the film is the craft of Locksmith Animation, the still burgeoning studio behind 2021’s similarly anodyne Ron’s Gone Wrong. The house style leans closest to a budget Illumination, falling somewhat short of Rebecca Cobb’s livelier illustrations for the book, and lacking the soul and humanity of Pixar. A move to convey the story’s cold weather by rendering the cheeks of the film’s youngster cohort rouge had, meanwhile, the unfortunate side effect of making each like they have just been slapped by some disciplinarian parent. No such cruelty really exists in this world.

Brian Cox narrates the tale, voicing a single reindeered Santa on a Christmas Eve besieged by the worst blizzard ever seen in the South-East. The setting is Wellington-on-Sea, a fictional seaside town, likely named for Curtis’ New Zealand birthplace and in relocation to his present home in East Suffolk. There’s more snow here than has ever been seen in Southwold but such allows for a certain biscuit box aesthetic that we must forgive at Christmas. An excess of the white stuff afford’s the film, too, its sweetest material, as a lonely boy and his lonelier teacher build snowmen in the schoolyard. It’s a gently loaded sequence.

Another strand in the weave finds twin sisters, one naughty, one nice, mixed up on the big man’s famous list, while, elsewhere, a precocious girl is left to manage a kids-only Christmas night when their mums and dads wind up stranded in the storm. There are Curtisisms everywhere, from the shonky school Nativity, given an out-there modern update, to the single mum superwoman let down by her no-show ex, and the shy lad yearning for the love of an equally bashful girl. None of it quite zings. Curtis’ script lacks acuity in its humour and struggles with familiarity. Much like the dusky Ed Sheeran tune dropped halfway through, That Christmas charms and bores by equal measure.

There’s some fun, at least, in name checking an all-star voice cast. Fiona Shaw is a highlight, as is northern newcomer Jack Wisniewski, who plays the son of an energetic Jodie Whittaker. Bill Nighy voices an aged lighthouse keeper, while Katherine Parkinson, Alex Macqueen and Rosie Cavaliero are among the parents. All bring chirpy eccentricity, although lack of vocal fluidity rather stilts the dialogic bounce. This may be the inexperience of first-time director, Simon Otto, better known for his oversight of the animation in DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon. A minor hiccup, then.

If this pint-sized Love Actually won’t enjoy the same longevity of its forebear, there’s gentility enough for the here and now. For the very young, it’s best enjoyed with warm cocoa and a thick blanket.

T.S.