‘Tis the season for “Noelle.”
The charming Christmas comedy launches on the Disney+ streaming service on Tuesday, Nov. 12, with Anna Kendrick as the title character, a big-hearted lover of the Yuletide season who also happens to be Kris Kringle’s daughter – and a key player in the family business at the North Pole.
“I was expecting it to be really cute and really funny, and in watching it now I find it really heartwarming,” said Kendrick, an Academy Award and Tony nominee.
“Noelle,” Kendrick noted, also found an ideal destination as one of the titles premiering on day one of Disney’s new platform.
“Disney+ is the perfect home for it,” she said, “because these are the kinds of movies that you want to sit around with your family and watch, hopefully, every year, and it’s our hope that it becomes a Christmas tradition.”
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“Noelle” is also very much a movie of its time. As she and her brother Nick, played by Bill Hader, approach their first Christmas since their father’s passing, Nick is weary about donning the red cap and beard and Noelle challenges the expectations placed on women in her society.
“Obviously I think it’s about the season and it’s about what really matters at this time of year, which most Christmas movies are, because it’s a lovely message, and I think it’s really great that it has this girl power twist on it, too,” said Kendrick.
Discussing why “Noelle” is a Christmas movie for our current climate, producer Suzanne Todd expressed her hopes that “we’re in a conversation where it’s really about things changing for women, and this idea of expectations, or possibly a box that you feel like you’ve been put in and that there really is the possibility to break out of that and do other things that people never thought you could do.”
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Noelle’s journey, Todd said, mirrors that experienced by many people.
“When she realizes that she actually is talented in ways she didn’t think she was, it’s sort of this amazing moment that I think a lot of girls and young girls and women have at some point in their life, which is kind of stepping into their light and stepping into their integrity and realizing that ‘I can actually be more than I thought or than people told me I could,'” said Todd.
Noelle’s adventure — involving her search for her brother when Nick goes AWOL days before Christmas — brings her across the path of a Phoenix-based private investigator played by Kinglsey Ben-Adir, an actor known for his work on series including “Peaky Blinders” and “The OA.”
Ben-Adir’s character, a cynical but fundamentally decent person going through a rough patch in life, serves as a key connection between Noelle and the world outside of the North Pole. The script by director Marc Lawrence, Ben-Adir said, “was sweet and it was funny and it was charming and (with) all of the relationships, it was beautiful to read.”
Lawrence, who wrote “Miss Congeniality” (2000) before writing and directing films including “Two Weeks Notice” (2002) and “Music and Lyrics” (2007), said that character came before any social or political message when crafting “Noelle.”
“I didn’t want to be in a position where the movie 10 years from now, 15 years from now would feel dated, politically,” he said. “And I think one way to circumvent that is to concentrate on character. Characters are never outdated. Those struggles are never outdated, so hopefully if we’re lucky enough to have people watching it 10 or 15 years from now it will feel as fresh and enjoyable as I hope it does now.”
