I really wanted to like this production. I absolutely love The Chosen series and I believe it to be one of the best portrayals of the life of Jesus Christ, his teachings, and the apostles I personally have ever seen. I was under the impression that the movie was going to take us on the same powerful journey the series did, beautifully depicting the birth of Jesus Christ. My daughter has not seen the series yet, and I was eager to take her with us to the movie theater for her to have her first experience watching an inspirational depiction of the birth and life of Jesus. Unfortunately, 85 minutes into the production/movie or whatever we should call, all I was seeing was musical presentations, interviews with band members, and monologues. I was sincerely confused. Yes, the songs are beautiful, and many of the testimonials are touching, but I could not relate to them so their message was lost. I felt like I was misled into thinking that we were going to watch another powerful portrayal of Jesus Christ and instead, we were there to watch Christian singers sing and give their messages about faith. We are living in difficult times, we are enduring a tough moment in history where tyranny, false accusations, division, criminality, immorality, corruption, lies, and atheism are taking over this world. We need series like The Chosen to keep us in check with our spiritual life. It's heartbreaking to see that an opportunity was truly missed with this production to successfully bring us closer to the Gospel and surrender our lives to Christ. When the movie finally presents the birth of Christ, the experience feels incomplete. For those who never watched the series, it gave an impression of missing something instead of feeling spiritually fulfilled, unlike the series which were so successful in achieving this goal. I left the theater a bit sad. In spite of all of this, I love the series with all my heart and will always be faithful to their production and message, however I will most likely not attend any other movie production they may have in the future!

How do you pretend that an episode is an entire movie? Play a lot of vocals at the beginning that does not help move the plot. I had loved the Chosen series, the multi-threaded plot lines, backstories for the characters, a really wholesome experience. You would anticipate that concept taken to a whole new level in a movie version. Instead you get an hour and 15 mins of Gospel singers, lip singing to their own videos and then a 30 mins episode in the TV series. Does not meet the expectation that it created.

I love "The Chosen" series and wanted to support it by seeing "Christmas with the Chosen" in theaters. I knew there would be special music in addition to the story itself, but hadn't realized the story would only be about 25% of the viewing experience. CCM isn't really my cup of tea, and all the zoomed-in facial emoting didn't help. (The Bonner family, however, was wonderful, as were the children's choir pieces). I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from supporting a good cause or from sending a message to theaters that there is a market for good-quality Christian films like "The Chosen"... but just recognize that most of this film is not actually "The Chosen."