Black Nativity – Film Review

Writer-director Kasi Lemmons’s film of Langston Hughes’s famous 1961 African-American stage musical is a well-crafted, conscientious labour of love.

A modern-day, reinterpreted story concerns Langston (Jacob Latimore), a street-wise teen raised by his about-to-be-evicted single mother in Baltimore, who sends him to New York City to spend the Christmas holidays with his estranged grandparents (Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett). They’re misguided but toe-achingly kindly.

Even with lots of beautifully sung gospel and R&B tunes, as a movie experience Black Nativity is only a modest pleasure. But if you’re in the Christmas spirit, the music and the film’s message about God’s help will go down well with the spoonful of sugar the script offers. Just a warning though, the heart-rending drama at the ending is really laid on thick with a huge fat trowel. But, hey, it’s a musical, and it doesn’t have to have a vestige of reality if it so chooses.

It helps a lot that Latimore is excellent, both in the singing and acting departments, as the boy struggling to find answers and being tempted by sin and disbelief. As you’d expect from this Oscar-winner, Whitaker is very good value too, adding a lot of weight and authority to his role as the Reverend Cornell Cobbs, and Tyrese Gibson is effective as the man who turns out to be the boy’s long-lost father. Other performances are variable. Bassett overdoes it as grannie Cobbs; Jennifer Hudson ditto as the boy’s mother Naima.

If you want to hear Whitaker singing, this is the film for you. His showstopper is Can’t Stop Praising His Name, performed with the Gospeldelic Choir.

(C) Derek Winnert 2013 derekwinnert.com