IT’S CHRISTMAS AGAIN Creator Says She Wanted to ‘Include Jesus’ in Holiday Movie
By Movieguide® Staff
IT’S CHRISTMAS AGAIN is not the first Christmas movie for director and creator Sandra Martin.
But the veteran filmmaker said that the movie’s focus on faith and Jesus is what helps the holiday musical stand out.
“I’ve been making movies for a while and I’ve even made two Christmas movies in the past,” Martin told CBN’s Faithwire in a recent interview. “But what really strikes me is, as many movies are being made and as many movies as people are consuming, there’s very few that include Jesus. That was something that was just put on my heart. I wanted that to be part of our Christmas story.”
“I wanted to — for those of us who have heard the story since we were young — I wanted to put a bit of a twist on it,” she added. “Not to change the importance of the credibility of the story, but just tell it in a fun way. … But it’s still about Jesus and how He came to earth.”
A portion of Movieguide®’s review of the movie reads:
IT’S CHRISTMAS AGAIN is a faith-filled musical that centers on the life of Jake Young, a high-schooler who has a life-changing experience on Christmas Eve. So far, nothing about the Christmas holiday is going right for Jake. His girlfriend can’t come on his family ski trip, and his brother breaks his leg as they’re leaving, so his family is forced to cancel the trip. Jake blames his brother and goes to find his girlfriend. However, after a skateboarding accident, Jake wakes up as a shepherd in the town of Bethlehem on the night of Jesus Christ’s birth. As he learns the true meaning of Christmas, his perspective and attitude changes towards the holiday season, his family and Jesus.
IT’S CHRISTMAS AGAIN is a fun, upbeat musical, with choreographed dance numbers and good vocals. This is an uplifting musical that the family can enjoy together and celebrate the birth of Christ in a unique way. While there are some adult themes about death in the movie, IT’S CHRISTMAS AGAIN is full of the hope, joy and peace that comes with Jesus Christ’s birth.
Martin said that she treats her career in the entertainment industry as her ministry.
“Just like anyone else, in whatever you do in your walk of life, I feel like it’s our ministry,” she explained.
Movieguide® previously reported of IT’S CHRISTMAS AGAIN:
In the new Christmas musical, IT’S CHRISTMAS AGAIN, the real-life mother and daughter acting duo got to act alongside each other as mother and daughter on screen!
Leela plays Abbey, one of the main characters in the movie, and Trisha plays her mother, Abigail.
“I’ve just kind of watched her career grow as an actress and she’s such a brilliant actress and just amazingly talented,” Trisha told Movieguide® of the opportunity to act alongside her daughter. “It was really cool to actually be her singing partner and get to play with her on screen. So I’m just so proud of her and it was just a memory I’ll never forget that I got to do that for this film.”
“The days before we had our scenes together we would work on the scene together and practice it together,” Leela added. “It was a really fun memory because we both love acting so much.”
Both Leela and Trisha said that the deeper themes of family and faith were what drew them to the movie initially.
“My family have always been really big Christians and then for me personally, my faith really grew my senior year of high school and it completely changed the entire way that I viewed myself and everything like that,” Leela said. “I did think it was very cool that it was like a Christian faith-based film. On top of that I just loved the film in general. I think it’s a very unique story.”
“A lot of Christmas movies are reused, recycled, the same exact stuff over and over and over again,” she added. “But I thought this was a very unique script. I think that it’s a very meaningful script. A lot Christmas movies are more light-hearted and more about Santa’s cookies, stuff like that. This is definitely a light-hearted movie, but it also has a deeper meaning to it.”
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This content was originally published here.
