Movie Reviews

Yari Film Group

The Bigger Picture:  This is, let's see...a lump of coal in the holiday film season stocking. Or maybe it's the top name on this year's "naughty" list. Any bad cliché would fit this big, bad cliché of a movie. So, what's Queen Latifah doing here?

Review in a Hurry:  Nancy (Gabrielle Union) is a single mom with three kids. Her ex J-Jizzy (Charles Murphy) is a Kanye West-like mogul-musician whom the kids adore, but he always picks career over children. Nancy's youngest, Emily (Khail Bryant), asks Santa for a simple complement for her attention-starved mom. Little does she know, Santa is actually starving songwriter Benjamin (the incredibly uncharismatic Morris Chestnut), and he happens to think Emily's mom is superfine.

Thus, the wheels of the plot start to lamely turn, and you will never get the next 96 minutes of your life back.

A Christmas fable for the whole family certainly needs to err on the side of simplicity, but The Perfect Holiday is actually written for simpletons. The dialogue is so one-note, the plot absurd, and most attempts at humor fall flat. The script feels like it was written by four different people. Oh wait, it was written by four different people!

What's sad is a lot of great folks are involved in this picture. Union gamely steps it up as the vulnerable but tough Nancy, and Queen Latifah (also a producer) and Terrence Howard do their best as a guardian angel and devil, respectively...or something like that. She's credited as Narrator and he's credited as Bah Humbug, whatever that means.

Maybe Latifah realized this was a sinking ship fast, because despite their apparently structural presence in the film, she and Howard pretty much disappear after a strong start. And you really can't blame them.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  There may be enough stupid humor to be funny—if you're loaded on wassail. Maybe.