With the holiday season now in full effect, we're getting a barrage of holiday film after holiday film. One of the latest is from director and writer Kasi Lemmons, who brings us an updated adaptation
of Langston Hughes’ play "Black Nativity," starring Jacob Latimore, Forest
Whitaker, Angela Bassett and Jennifer Hudson. A movie with a lack of subtlety and well-crafted-but-jarring musical numbers is here and offering a different take on Hughes' 1961 tale.
The story begins with Langston (Latimore), a 15-year-old who with his single mother Naima (Hudson) lives in a fairly poor area of Baltimore. When he and his mother are
evicted from their home, she decides to send him to his grandparents' house in
Harlem for the Christmas holiday until she can figure things out. Once there, he
meets his grandparents for the first time, since his mother is estranged from
them because of some disagreement in the past. It’s hard for Langston to get adjusted to being in New York
and living with his grandfather, a famous preacher (Whitaker) in the city and
his loving grandmother (Bassett), who tries to no avail to give him everything
he would need to adjust and have a good holiday. Everything is leading to the performance of "Black Nativity" planned at his grandfather's church where Langston’s grandfather has a performance of the Black Nativity
play for everyone in the community.
It’s really hard to figure out the character of Langston in
this story. Throughout it he’s so focused on his mother and her troubles that
he takes no real time to get to know his grandparents at all. It’s all
complaining and whining. Latimore does have a good singing voice though,
something I can’t really say the same for Whitaker and Bassett but I like that
it is them instead of having them not sing at all. Jennifer Hudson is as always
amazing in each singing performance in the film and really shines, which she has to since she really isn’t given much to do acting-wise.
The movie really isn’t that long and goes by pretty quickly.
That becomes a problem since every time you start to get interested in the plot
of the story out of nowhere there is a song. While you’re thinking of course a musical has songs it’s in how it’s handled and how the moments
of story and character development flow in and out of those songs. This movie
did not do that well. Still Raphael Saadiq should be commended on production of
the music throughout the picture. The soundtrack felt current and not annoying to
sit though.
