Do movies like this really sell? I mean you realize when you make a movie entitled “Black Nativity,” you are deliberately alienating all peoples who are not black or are not Christian. In fact, me showing up at all is cause for raised eyebrows. I suppose this is true for all movies, in a sense. My grandmother is not the target audience for Inception, after all. Still, as movies continue to be multi-million dollar ventures, you usually don’t try to alienate within the title.
Black Nativity is a good ol’ day in church. Gotcher evil. Gotcher temptation. Gotcher angels. Gotcher salvation. Gotcher revelation. Gotcher smiles. The end.
Oh, all right. I suppose there’s more to it than that. Naima (Jennifer Hudson) can’t pay the rent in Baltimore, so she sends her son, our “hero,” Langston (Jacob Latimore), to sing his way north for the holidays. Upon arriving in Times Square, he immediately goes to work: he misses the grand’rents (Forest Whitaker and Angela Bassett), has his stuff and money stolen and gets arrested all within … wait for it … a New York Minute. :rimshot: Zank you. The arrest is particularly appalling from a number of angles – Langston’s bag was stolen, so he tries to phone his kin from a hotel. Hotel refuses, Langston not being a guest and all. But then the kid spies an unattended wallet on a counter. He has a moment of personal angel/devil tog o’ war, then his turns to hand the wallet to the man, suddenly alarmed that a black kid has his wallet! Wow. This still passes for reasonable controversy, does it? Look, no middle aged white guy willing to call the cops on a 
punk kid would leave his wallet on any counter of midtown Manhattan place of business. Period. What is this, entrapment? And no teenager opting to pass on the hilariously easy theft opportunity would touch that wallet. What, the rules don’t apply to black kids in Baltimore? You’re given the benefit of the doubt in Maryland, are you? Good luck with that.
After the Reverend Cobbs (Whitaker) retrieves his grandchild from the pokey, he can’t wait to present him with a new thieving opportunity of a valuable watch. And Langston does indeed pocket and try to pawn the valuable item. Rrrrrrrr. You’re not making any friends here, kid. I don’t care what your motives are. You see what this looks like. EVERYBODY sees what this looks like.
Luckily, Black Nativity isn’t just about Langston stealing the rent for mom. There’s puh-lenty of quality singing and a few “surprises.” I guess it’s possible you’ll be surprised, at least. I wouldn’t bank on it. There’s an inverse relationship here between the amount somebody sings and the quality of acting that person produces. For instance, Forest Whitaker barely sings at all while our hero, Langston, sings a lot. Raps, too. He’s a lousy actor. He’s the type of actor you have to read based on actions because his face never seems to match the scene. There’s only so far one can go with a bad lead actor playing a bad character. And yet, the paint by numbers ending in church is weirdly satisfying. I suggest you skip through all the non-singing parts in getting there.
♪Silent night
Script is light
On the things
That make it right
Young rapscallion
Learns moral
With the help
Of the cast chorale
Slept through all of Act II – oooh
Slept through all of Act II♫
Rated PG, 93 Minutes
D: Kasi Lemmons
W: Kasi Lemmons
Genre: Preachin’
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The choir
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Otherly faithed
♪Parody inspired by “Silent Night”
