Nativity 3: Dude Where's My Donkey?

The title is the funniest thing about this cynical seasonal cash-in from a franchise that should never have ventured beyond its second instalment,‘Danger in the Manger’. Long gone is Martin Freeman. Absent is David Tennant. This time Martin Clunes and Catherine Tate humiliate themselves in a virtually plotless cavalcade of donkey poo, drab singalongs, donkey farts and fake Christmas sentiment. Where the first film improvised merrily around a solid comedy set-up – chaos at the school nativity – here, only the junior-school supporting cast offers the tiniest glint of charm. The whole thing revolves around Clunes and Tate’s amnesia-threatened New York nuptials and is weirdly fixated on Yuletide flashmob dance numbers. It’s not altogether inappropriate that donkey dung should figure so heavily in the film’s crass line-up of laugh-free japes.