Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square is a small-screen musical with huge emotions

Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square is a must-watch Netflix movie

Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square packs in warm, fuzzy moments at a steady clip, never letting subtlety get in the way of tradition.

Following the success of the coming-of-age comedy Dumplin’ and last year’s Heartstrings anthology, it’s no wonder why Netflix has stayed in the Dolly Parton business. The latest product of the pairing, Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square, arrived on Netflix on Nov. 22.

Parton has made Christmas specials her bread and butter over the past few years. The assuredness that comes with her foreknowledge of the genre’s rhythms and most hallowed iterations lends Christmas on the Square venerable, easygoing veracity. It’s that same scholarly confidence that gives Parton’s songwriting its evergreen quality.

On the topic of the songs, while few could be rightly described as belonging to a country idiom, the Nashville tradition of emotional transparency is alive in Parton’s many original numbers for the film. A standout is “A Father’s Prayer,” lovingly performed by Matthew Johnson, making his fiction film debut. Parton’s lyrics outline the fear of being a widower that outlives one’s child, but bypass most of the challenges of grief to approach an acceptance of the child’s passing upon realizing that their death would reunite them with their long-deceased mother. Here the song dovetails neatly into the film’s narrative without losing any of its power as a standalone tune. If there’s any justice, it will join the ranks of musical audition standards for years to come.

While no song on its own has anything especially egregious about it (this is Dolly we’re talking about, she’s an industry pro), I worry that Christmas on the Square squeezes one too many major-key ballads into its 98-minute runtime, making me wonder what, if anything, was excised from the stage play from which the film is adapted.

The theatrical roots of the production are glaringly evident from the outset, with a cheery production number that introduces every key player in the story and what they want, zipping through exposition as if it was deathly allergic to the idea. The tenor of the performances across the board is similarly more stage-friendly than camera-ready. Josh Segarra’s chiseled Pastor Christian is especially guilty of this fundamental misunderstanding of the medium, seemingly rarely altering his volume, as if he was speaking so as to be heard at the back row of a theater. Granted, it could be an extension of the character’s vocation of delivering sermons, but it gives Mary Lane Haskell little to latch onto in their too-few scenes together as husband and wife.

There are moments, however, when the stagy approach can foster a moment of genuine glee. A town meeting in the church builds to a comic crescendo by way of an ensemble number, “The Wickedest Witch of the Middle.” Director Debbie Allen leans into the Arlen-Harburg of it all, welcoming every exaggerated facial expression and synchronized hand gesture. It’s whimsical and joyous, finally selling the audience on the film’s vision of the communal spirit of American small-town life being threatened in the story by a faceless mega-mall corporation.

Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square won’t replace It’s a Wonderful Life,The Muppets Christmas Carol or even How The Grinch Stole Christmas as a holiday classic, but it’s not trying to. It simply builds upon the traditions of those films in its own folksy way. For Dolly acolytes like myself, this is a sweet holiday treat, and the very mention of a stolid, hard-working gent named Carl might be reason enough to give this a watch.