That Christmas | 2024 | PG | – 2.2.1

Why is “That Christmas” rated PG? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “thematic elements, some language and rude humor.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes one near-kiss between a boy and a girl, discussions of children having crushes, several scenes where people are seen wearing underwear or swimsuits, perilous scenes during a blizzard including a car crashing and people becoming stranded, several scenes of mild cartoonish injuries, about 7 mild obscenities and some name-calling. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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Animated feature about the small town of Wellington-on-Sea, when a terrible snowstorm has unforeseen effects on the villagers’ Christmas, and between the storm and Santa’s (voiced by Brian Cox) intervention, families and friends are brought together in surprising ways. Also with the voices of Bill Nighy, Guz Khan, Fiona Shaw, Jodie Whitaker and Rhys Darby. Directed by Simon Otto. [Running Time: 1:36]

That Christmas SEX/NUDITY 2

 – A boy and girl who like each other hold hands and run into the ocean; they lean close about to kiss but they are interrupted when a wave knocks them over. A boy asks the girl he likes if she’d like to “get together for wine gums sometime,” and the girl accepts.
► A girl playing Mary in a school play wears a pregnancy costume, then trips and a watermelon falls out from under her dress; another girl playing Joseph says, “My wife is pregnant… with a big watermelon!” A girl playing Mary sings that she has made up her mind and she is going to “keep her baby.”
► A man stands up to peddle on a tandem bike and his clothed rear end is in his wife’s face; she looks embarrassed and says, “Steady on!” Trapped in a van and trying to sleep, a woman tells a man to move his foot; when he does, another woman yelps and says, “Not to there!”
► A narrator describes a girl as being the love of a boy’s life; the boy looks at the girl dreamily. A boy complains about the girl he has a crush on not noticing him, calling her the most beautiful and cleverest girl on Earth; he reads a note from his mother that says, “Love you, and one day, she will too.” A woman asks her son how it is going with his “romance campaign” for a girl he likes; the mother later says that he will eventually sweep the girl off her feet and they will “ride off into the sunset on a monster truck.” A woman tells her son, “If love was easy, your father wouldn’t have run off with his 25-year-old dental nurse.” While a girl and a boy talk, the girl’s sister fogs up a window and draws a heart, wiggling her eyebrows at the girl. A girl finds a note that shows her sister is playing matchmaker with her and the boy she likes; it has a drawing of them smiling with a heart around it. A girl tells her sister to get on a motorbike with a boy she likes, saying, “Get on with Romeo, Juliet.” A boy says his mother (a nurse) was late the previous night and jokingly asks if she had a hot date; she says yes, with a “78-year-old with a bed pan.” A talking reindeer flirts with a reindeer decoration, calling it “sweet antlers” and asking to go flying together; the decoration’s head flies off in the wind and he says, “I’ll take that as a no.” A reindeer says his “unmentionables are turning to snowballs” in a blizzard.
► A boy uses his belt to decorate a snowman, and his pants fall down, exposing his underwear in front of a teacher; he is embarrassed as he pulls his pants back up. Several people go to the beach for a polar plunge and we see them wearing swimsuits, including men and boys in trunks and speedos (we see bare chests); one man wears Speedo-type trunks that has a reindeer face and a red Rudolph nose on the crotch.

That Christmas VIOLENCE/GORE 2

 – A young girl wanders off in a blizzard; a neighborhood conducts a search for her and when her sister finds footsteps near the ocean, and she worries that the water swept her away (the child is found unharmed). A van drives perilously during a snowstorm, nearly crashing and narrowly avoiding several turkeys; the van drives off the side of a bridge and lands upside down leaving the passengers buckled into their seats and hanging upside down (no one is injured) until they release themselves and groan in pain as they fall. A van with people inside it skids onto a frozen lake; people stand on top of a van, the ice begins to crack and they all scream and panic (it does not fall through). In a few scenes, several people are trapped in a van in the middle of nowhere during a blizzard. A woman reporting on the weather is blown off-screen by wind and we hear her scream.
► A boy in a play is pulled over the audience on a rig; he grabs a rope and stops himself, yelling, “Ouch!” and his mother in the audience gasps; he later loses his balance, sliding along the track, knocks a watermelon (a prop portraying a baby Jesus) out of a girl’s hands, and it hits the ground and splatters (we hear the splattering sound and see audience members covered in watermelon goo). In several scenes, a boy runs into doors and shouts, “Ouch!” and rubs his face. A pile of snow falls on a woman and she shouts, “Help, I’ve been murdered!”
► Two men try to climb a snowy hill; the one in front slips and crashes into the other man, his rear end hitting the other man’s face and they both fall but are uninjured. A girl frees turkeys from a cage and they charge out of a barn, knocking people over; people chase them and fall down in the snow. People are seen outside during a blizzard and thunderstorm (we see thick snow falling and hear thunderclaps) in several scenes. Santa and a reindeer fly during a blizzard, crashing into some rooftops and narrowly avoiding others. Santa Claus slips on a roof and falls, yelping in pain and putting his hands over his groin; he falls off a roof, but his foot is caught in a string of Christmas lights, and he dangles from the roof upside down. A reindeer yells, “We’re going to die!” and then says to Santa, “if you take a tumble, I’m putting you in a home.”
► A woman asks if they should walk when stuck in a snowstorm and her husband says no, unless she wants to lose “toes, fingers and other soft bits to frostbite,” and they talk about the danger of freezing to death. Several children have a snowball fight and shout things like “I’m gonna get you,” and “this means war”; one boy gets hit in the face with a snowball and is knocked over and a parent watching says, “Right in the piehole!” and the children start throwing snowballs at a glass door and yell, “parent attack.” A girl loads a toy blaster gun with Brussel sprouts and shoots them at her friends; they strike snowmen. In a few scenes, a woman pulls her dog’s leash hard when it resists going inside and it yelps. A woman calls her dog names and yells at it.
► In several scenes, there are discussions of death and references to deceased loved ones; a woman looks at a photo album with pictures of her deceased husband and cries, a nurse discusses a patient who is dying and how “it wouldn’t be nice to die with someone you didn’t like holding your hand,” and a man with flowers sits at a memorial and we understand that his elderly mother passed away.
► A girl says if she doesn’t get the present she wants for Christmas, she’ll catch Santa in a sack and shave off his beard; her sister tells her that she cannot blackmail Santa. A woman says that she worries about leaving several young children alone with an older girl and thinks that she will get distracted and “let the kids start fires indoors.” A boy hears that school is closed because of snow and shouts, “Death to Trapper’s terrible test,” referring to a test scheduled at school that day. A girl says that she and her sister are going to have a “snowball fight-ageddon.” A teacher mentions Henry the VIII’s wife “who was executed.” A girl tells her mother not to buy a turkey from a man because he’s a “turkey torturer.” A miserable reindeer says Christmas night has been an “endless, tear off your own antlers and eat them” kind of night. A woman says “beware the wrath of my furled umbrella” when she suspects there are carolers at her door. We see a sign at a turkey farm that says, “Kill yer own.”
► A girl making a gingerbread cookie makes a monster with a large red frosting splatter that looks like blood. A woman sits on her piano bench and we hear flatulence; she pulls a whoopie cushion out from under her and her daughter laughs. A young girl chugs a bottle of soda, then burps loudly.

That Christmas LANGUAGE 1

 – About 2 mild obscenities, name-calling (moron, stupid, dullard, suckers, stubborn old fusspot, fat present dispenser, wretched, speccy, daft blobs, boring, weird, infamous oik, terrifying old trout), exclamations (darned, darn, gosh, flipping heck, goodness sake), 4 religious exclamations (e.g. oh God, good Lord, God hates me, God help us), about 10 uses of “Jesus” in the context of a nativity play, including “Happy Birthday, Jesus,” during a nativity play the children present a new version of the story with Three Wise Women. | profanity glossary |

That Christmas SUBSTANCE USE

 – A woman on a family walk on Christmas holds a champagne glass and appears tipsy saying she can’t walk straight.

That Christmas DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Divorce, work-life balance, Christmas, naughty and nice lists, disastrous weather, religion, tradition versus innovation, loss and parental death.

That Christmas MESSAGE

 – Christmas can be an emotional magnifying glass, making us feel especially loved or especially lonely; but Christmas can also be the best time to fix things.