Nick, as the next living male Kringle, is expected to take on the Santa mantle, but his training isn’t going well. Siblings Noelle (Anna Kendrick) and Nick Kringle (Bill Hader) are facing their first Christmas since the death of their father, Santa Claus (Bryan Brendle). But when all these subplots are combined, they turn into a gloppy Christmas porridge. There’s a fish-out-of-water story, a story about inheritance in an inherently patriarchal society, a dip into the North Pole’s caste system, a story about how big businesses are bad, and of course, a lesson about the importance of the Christmas spirit. Writer-director Marc Lawrence ( Miss Congeniality, Music and Lyrics) is working with a lot of elements that, on their own, seem like fresh, bordering-on-subversive takes on classic Christmas themes. Disney Plus’ original Christmas movie Noelle is like a recipe where all the ingredients are delicious, then realizing, once the dish has been cooked, that the flavors cancel each other out.
