How much leeway does one give a film for the sake of goodwill? Or because the majority of performers are children? Or that the intended audience are children, and all that film wants is to bring some level of glee to their lives? The charitable soul would answer that, when looking at something like Nativity 3: Dude, Where's My Donkey?!, it is perhaps best give the film a fair amount creative latitude, to endure a degree of implausibility in the name of festive fun. After all, Christmas films such as these only ever want to inspire a sense of fun and giddy excitement in the children who watch them, to entertain them with crazy antics and a broad sense of silliness. Indeed, a charitable soul can overlook the flaws of the film and honour the merriment it stirs.
I’m not a charitable soul…
You may have noticed by the above description that it’s kind of all over the place, which it absolutely is. Nativity 3 is an absolute mess, a chaotic maelstrom of zaniness and sentimentality ripped straight from a soap opera and filtered through a Christmas panto dress rehearsal. Logic is no friend of Nativity 3, so any attempt to find such a thing within it is the very definition of wasted effort. Things just happen, people just do things, you’d almost want to label the whole thing as a massive in-joke or some mid-level Dadaist experiment if it weren’t for the film’s own belief that it was working towards something approaching human feeling or coherence. Or at least its own version of coherence, which seems to be in perfect synch with that of the insufferable Mr Poppy, for whom everything is basically a cartoon.
Really, though, what does one do with a film like this? It seems pointless to spend any amount of time focused on it simply because no good can come of that effort. It feels as if to try to pass comment or critique would ultimately fall on deaf ears, either because those who wouldn’t watch it are in no danger or because those that would watch it are already lost. Trying to shout down something as gratingly appalling as this film is giving it more of you than it warrants or deserves. But you equally can’t just let it slide by without at least acknowledging just how unreservedly, shockingly terrible it truly is. If nothing else, you must at least affirm the belief that this film can only leave its audience at a deficit.
There is nothing to be gained from Nativity 3: Dude, Where's My Donkey?!. It’s not just a cynical cash-in on a property that maybe once had an air of promise about it, but it’s an insult to what it is to create something entertaining, something engaging, something good. It is an absence of these things, a vacuum of quality and artistry, 110 minutes devoid of imagination. That some will be happy to accept it as a bit of harmless festive entertainment to occupy their young ones is almost as much of a disgrace as it is that someone thought to put it out there in the first place. We as an audience deserve better than this, and any form of favourable reception towards Nativity 3 is to perpetuate the idea that this kind of fare is good enough.