Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas) (2006) Critic Reviews

With a cast of Scottish, German and French actors all speaking their own language, writer-director Christian Carion has fashioned a deeply moving and uplifting piece.Read the full review

A period drama marbled with humor, bold gestures and bittersweet consequences.Read the full review

Joyeux Noël is gritty and disturbing with its extended scenes of war and destruction. It also is emotional, even a touch sentimental.Read the full review

Its sentimentality is muted by the thought that this moment of peace actually did take place, among men who were punished for it, and who mostly died soon enough afterward.Read the full review

It takes an extraordinary film on the order of Joyeux Noel to make it all suddenly vital, immediate and human.Read the full review

It makes for a fascinating exploration of the human experience.Read the full review

The uncomplicated humanism of Joyeux Noël, with its Christmas message of peace, feels at once irrefutable and refreshing.Read the full review

Though a painless time-passer, Joyeux Noël ultimately contributes little to the venerable anti-war genre beyond its curious message that to some degree, war is hell because it prevents soldiers from making really neat friends and pen-pals from different counties.Read the full review

The first two-thirds of Joyeux Noel are strangely inert, but the film ends with a moving and surprisingly sophisticated meditation on the definition of moral duty.Read the full review