The Best Christmas Pageant Ever- A faith based holiday offering that doesn’t suffer from some of the poor production values of many underfunded faith based films.Featuring at least a few recognizable names in Judy Greer and Lauren Graham, the supposedly true story features a family of the worst children who find out that church gives out free food, and since they are poor, and their parents are quite literally never around, they start working the church. But, this is the time of the Christmas Pageant, and this church puts on a legendary pageant. This year, the lady who has been directing has an accident, and Greer takes over, much to the dismay of her daughter. But things get worse when the bad news kids decide they want to be in the show too. Oh, whatever will they do? Well, they certainly won’t find the parents. In a world full of Christians, not a single person at this church offered to help in any way so that the kids who are “free range” might actually get to see a parent for the Holidays. I assume they just work non-stop, but no one seems actually concerned about bringing the parents there to see their kids in this show. This is one of the problems that I had with the Forge, which doubles as a recruitment video for fulfillment centers. Everyone is feeling Jesus, but they don’t see that probably the biggest gift they could have given these misspent youths was time with their parents. And someone in this massive crowd is likely the owner or manager of where their parents work, and could have easily come in for a heartwarming finale. But, nope. the film does have decent audio description though, and does a decent job of finding differences in the kids. But, it’s alright. It could have been so much better.
Fresh: Final Grade: B-, Audio Description: B+
Big Boys- I made a Top 28 list this year, but it was really a Top 30. I had two films that likely would have been in my top 30, had they had audio description. Big Boys was one of two films lacking audio description that flew this close to the sun. I also had it listed for Best Actor. It is a coming of age tale where a younger teen gets to hang out and camp with his older cousin, and her new boyfriend. At first, he seems bummed about the new boyfriend, but as the movie progresses, he starts to learn a lot more about himself as the guy is really nice, and super chill. He isn’t even going to make fun of our kid for packing spices so that way the food they cook while camping can be Top Chef level food. I want more people to see this, and I want it to have audio description. this is obviously, at least, a recommend. Audio description would just certify what I suspect is likely an A grade waiting in the wings.
Fresh: No Grade Due to Lack Of Audio Description
American Cats- This one is pretty easy. Do you like cats? Do you really like cats? Well, this documentary about how we as Americans are obsessed with declawing them, shows the activist movement behind the no-declaw legion of cat people whose dream is to stop the deformation of these animals. I is effective, even without audio description, because it is pretty hard to argue the other side, unless you are not a cat person. I’d recommend it, but I can’t grade it without audio description.
Fresh: No Grade Given Due to Lack Of Audio Description