dir. Richard Mark Elson
Noelle is born on Christmas Day in a small Irish town. Growing up, she seems to have the power to perform miracles – specifically, to stop people fighting and make them care for each other instead. Her father works at the local snowglobe factory, and the entire town is shocked that such a vital business as a snowglobe factory in a small rural town is actually, somehow, failing. Of course, this provides a window for an evil corporate businessman to come in and suggest evil corporate things, like: get rid of the failing business and its archaic technology! Let the snowglobes be made somewhere else instead! Build a hotel and casino, promoting tourism and more jobs! All so utterly evil and corporate that Noelle must use her powers of love to save the day. It’s never clear if Noelle is really magic or not, as her supposed powers don’t at all feature in the climax. The story instead opts for a cringey showdown at Stormont where Noelle’s bunch of ragtag friends get together to expose the evil corporate businessman as evil and corporate. Naturally, this prompts Kylie Minogue to phone up and buy ten boxes of snowglobes, thus saving the factory. Cool! Hers isn’t the only jarring celebrity appearance, with performances by Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson so fleeting that they may well have literally phoned them in. A Christmas Star is an utterly baffling production, apparently aiming for the heavens but falling embarrassingly short.
BMDb 