Nativity Rocks! (2018)

Going into 'Nativity Rocks', I had very low expectations. After a brief look at both the trailer and poster, straight away I felt this film wasn't going to be one i'd remember for a long time afterwards. I fairly enjoyed Nativity 1 and 2, however I wasn't a big fan of the third instalment 'Dude, Where's My Donkey?', but nevertheless, I felt I had to watch the new 'Nativity', as I have seen and grown up with the other films. In the film, which features an almost entirely new cast, Jerry Poppy, who is the original Mr. Poppys long lost brother - and a bad imitation of the original character, who looking back, was quite funny - goes to St Bernadette, to replace Mr. Poppy, and help put on a new rock opera for the school Nativity, all the while annoying the blunt, scrooge-like teacher Mr. Johnson. Sound familiar? The plot is so similar to the first Nativity film, it makes you question whether a new story was even written, or if they just used the exact same idea, but decided to add "Rock" to it. The characters are so stereotypical and the films all over the place but, somehow, for some odd reason, around halfway through the film, I started feeling something. One of the songs came on, and I felt my foot tapping. I even found myself laughing at one of B-Tech-Mr Poppy's jokes. I think...I was enjoying the film? There was something about the tone of the film, that was so stupid it was almost fun. Was it intentional? Who knows. Maybe this film was meant to be taken very seriously, or maybe I was allowed to laugh at and with it at the same time. The music, The awful dialogue, the random scene after random scene. It some however managed to entertain me. However, there was one big problem towards the end which lost my attention. The Nativity peformance itself. Similar to the first movie, in which The Nativity performance is shown, I felt the overall sequence was much longer than it needed to be and therefore, slightly lost my interest. While I know the climax of the film is the final performance, I feel the amount of time they spend on it is slightly excessive and self-indulgent. While these scenes started off as likeable and pleasant, they eventually just became graining and annoying, as, while I did enjoy the cheesy parts of the film, by the end I felt like I should be lactose-intolerant for the rest of my life. In the Q&A that took place with Debbie Issit, she didn't mention this Nativity once, however she did mention whenever an original song is featured in her film, she writes them herself, which I found interesting as it adds another layer of talent to the film. If you want 100 of minutes of pure cheese, bad singing, and awful acting watch this film. If your like me, you'll end up, for some reason, overall enjoying the film.