Film Review: Nativity! (U) (From The Northern Echo)

Film Review: Nativity! (U)

2:56pm Friday 27th November 2009

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Stars: Martin Freeman, Ashley Jensen, Jason Watkins, Marc Wootton, Alan Carr, Ricky Tomlinson
Running time: 106 mins
Rating: ★★★

DIRECTOR Debbie Isitt follows Confetti with another improvised comedy, this time about rivals competing to stage the best school nativity play.

Martin Freeman’s Mr Maddens is a primary school teacher who discovers that a neighbouring private school always gets better reviews.

Frustrated, Maddens says that a Hollywood producer, his exgirlfriend Jennifer (Ashley Jensen, from Extras and Ugly Betty), is going to turn the show into a Hollywood movie.

With a cast of schoolkids delivering natural comedy, this can’t help but entertain and you can only admire Isitt’s job in cutting down what must have been hundreds of hours of improvised footage into a cohesive movie.

And as for Alan Carr as the local (the film identifies its setting as Coventry)– newspaper theatre reviewer … let’s just say I never take my own sandwiches to a first night

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