Joyeux Noel

Expected more

This is a look at the effect of the coming of the First World War from the perspective of soldiers on the French, German and Scottish sides and the famous events of the 1914 Christmas armistice.

While the film features some strong performances, particularly from Guillaume Canet and Daniel Bruhl and there is some impressive cinematography, I found this film to be a touch heavy-handed in its approach, weighed down by some poor dialogue in places. This film also features some of the worse lip-synching you will ever see on screen from Diane Kruger and Benno Fuhrmann.

Despite its flaws, Joyeux Noel is touching, particularly in the way it shows the camaraderie between the different armies' soldiers. Solid but not great.

If you liked this, I would also recommend A Very Long Engagement.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Solid and sentimental

The famous football match between the troops on Christmas Day 1914 gets revisited, with musical accompaniment, in this pleasant French film, which has no doubt where its heart lies. The common decency and humanity which the soldiers discovered in their apparent enemies far outweighs, for the makers, the necessity of the war, or the manner in which it was being fought. This means that, while we do get, quite rightly, a lot about humanity and decency, we do not get anything to contrast it with - the horror of the trench warfare from which these men were briefly escaping, for instance - or the context to be able, fully, to understand their predicament. It's possible to argue that we don't get this context, because the soldiers at the front probably wouldn't have had it themselves, but that only leaves us with a film of fleeting pleasures, rather than something considered.