A boy called Christmas (Henry Lawfull)

(Amazon UK link)

We usually like watching Christmas films during December, and I’m always interested in recommendations for films we haven’t previously seen. I expect the reason I came across the 2021 film ‘A boy called Christmas’ at some point last year is that Maggie Smith was in it. I probably heard of it around the time she died in the Autumn of 2024. I put it on my wishlist, and was given it for Christmas last year.

However, we didn’t get the opportunity to watch any films in the last week of December 2024, and by January had decided we would return to non-Christmas films.  And now, nearly a year later, we finally sat down to watch it. I had entirely forgotten any descriptions or blurb that I might have read, so we had no idea what to expect.

The film opens with the elderly Aunt Ruth (a typical Maggie Smith character) walking through a snowy street to a house where she is going to be babysitting. There are three children, and their father has to go out to do some important work. Their mother died just a few months earlier, and they have decided not to celebrate Christmas at all this year. Only the youngest acknowledges that he’s still grieving.

Aunt Ruth says she will tell them a story, and most of the film involves that, with brief forays back to the children’s bedroom, to remind us that this is a story within a story. It’s about a boy called Nikolas (extremely well portrayed by Henry Lawfull) who lives in a hut in Finland. Apparently nobody there has ever heard of Christmas, although Nikolas’s mother sometimes called him ‘Christmas’ as a nickname. Nikolas, too, is motherless now, and lives with his woodcutter father Joel (Michiel Huisman). 

They - along with a lot of other working people - are summoned to the court of the king (Jim Broadbent). They are told that if they can travel to find something to bring hope, they will be rewarded. Joel decides to travel with some friends, in the hope of finding Elfhelm, the town of the elves, and leaves Nikolas with his most unpleasant aunt. Life is almost unbearable when Nikolas discovers a hidden map that will take him to Elfhelm. So he sets out, accompanied by his rather cute CGI mouse, on a long and very cold trek towards the north.

It’s a children’s film, so inevitably Nikolas finds the elves, and some conflict arises which, after much stress and effort, is eventually resolved. There’s some humour, and some good interactions between the cast. There’s plenty of talk about the spirit of Christmas and the need for hope, although all in a totally secular sense. Christmas is seen as a special time for everyone to be happy and to celebrate, with no mention of its origin or the reason we celebrate. But it’s a film for all, about the origins of the Santa Claus/Father Christmas story, and as such I thought it was very well done.

The pace is good, the acting excellent, and the CGI and other effects merge seamlessly with the acting. There are some thought-provoking issues that arise, about the start of rebellions and conflicts, and the problems of a single-minded and strong leader. I thought the occasional switches back to the original bedroom and Maggie Smith telling the story worked excellently. It pauses the tension and reminds us that Nikolas and the elves are part of a story which may or may not be ‘true’ (in the world of the children listening). 

Some of it is quite tense, so I think the rating of PG is correct. There’s nothing inappropriate for children, and the mild violence, such as it is, is mostly caricatured. But there are some unpleasant concepts that could disturb a sensitive or young child, and another loss towards the end, which I wasn’t expecting. I thought the discussion about grief, and Aunt Ruth’s comments were sensitively done, and there’s a positive ending both in the story about Nikolas and in the outer story of the grieving family.

Recommended if you like this kind of light-weight family-friendly children’s film. 

Review copyright 2025 Sue's DVD Reviews