A Christmas Gift From Bob: Film Review

Cast: Luke Treadaway, Ginger cat Bob

Director: Charles Martin Smith

If you're expecting A Christmas Gift From Bob to pack the same emotional punch as 2016's Street Cat Called Bob, you'd probably best check your expectations at the door.

Treadaway returns as busker James Bowen in this sanitised dark tale that's more interested in going once-over-lightly about a crisis than plumbing the dramatic depths. It is Christmas cinematic fare, one supposes.

Bowen is celebrating his success as an author and a cat-based busking legend - however, he comes across another homeless person being persecuted and unhappy with the Christmas period. So, sitting him down at a restaurant, Bowen decides to tell of a Christmas past where it nearly all went wrong for the pair.

There's not much depth in A Christmas Gift From Bob; it knows what it wants to do, from its close up shots of the cat looking cute to its light take on the darker side of the festive season. There is a gritty depressing film lurking deep somewhere in here, but Charles Martin Smith's not interested in mining that and giving the film the redemptive arc it's so suited for.

Instead, what emerges is something as wafty as a cloud, with commendable messages about kindness to others, sermons about not judging by appearance and of community coming together in an unexpected way.

What's also well handled is the reality of poverty, and how one simple mistake can send a massive ripple into the psyche of those caught in it and how circumstance and a chain of events can conspire against one at what should be one of the happiest times of the year.

A Christmas Gift From Bob dissolves into the obvious sentimental mush toward the end, and you'd have to hard a cold, hard cynical heart to ignore its "stronger together" message after 2020's absolute blitzkrieg of a year.

Thanks to a sensitive turn from Treadaway, delivering depth when there really is none, and the requisite cutesy shots of the titular cat, this will hit the audiences where it wants to - but it does lack the genuine warmth and feelgood nature of the first.

Whether it leaves you feline Christmassy depends entirely on your own disposition toward cinematic manipulation and a predictable plot points.