"Who can spell me Bethlehem?"Cute children? Animals? Christmas? Putting all three elements together should make this low-budget Brit comedy unbearable, but Nativity! has a knowing script and winning performances that put it mostly on the right side of entertaining. It splits neatly into three acts: the film opens reasonably grounded in reality, then becomes rather desperate to increase the stakes in the mid-section and ends with the primary school's triumphant performance in the ruined Coventry Cathedral (!) which makes Glee seem like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. It uses the neat trick of contrasting Mr Shakespeare's private school extravaganzas with Mr Madden's more down-to-earth group of children, making this a heartwarming tale of triumph-over-adversity. Marc Wooton provides a bizarrely funny characterisation as Mr Poppy, Madden's sidekick teaching assistant, but it is Martin Freeman's excellent performance as Madden that gives the film its strength and true heart.
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