Writer(s): Angela Burt-Murray
Starring: Chaley Rose, Tobias Truvillion, Phillip Edward Van Lear, and Lucien Cambric
Starring: Chaley Rose, Tobias Truvillion, Phillip Edward Van Lear, and Lucien Cambric
It’s that time of the year again:
time for a black Christmas movie! We were sorely let down by our last
couple White Christmases, so we figured it was time to settle in and
see what the “other race” had to offer.
As with any low-budget Christmas movie,
we weren’t expecting much--expectations that somehow dwindled even
further down once we saw that familiar MarVista logo (which I think
has been updated!) invading our television screen. They stayed
somewhere around “zero” when we first met our heroine: a stuck-up
looking worker at a family-owned jewelry store who looked every bit
as dry as she did boring. Here comes another personality-less drone
of a character, in probably yet another personality-less drone of a
movie, I thought to myself.
My, what a wonderful surprise this one
turned out to be! It still fulfills the requirements of all holiday
movies: namely, that almost everything about it has to be awful: and that
starts with the plot, which finds an ex-con freshly released from
jail, Devin, being forced against his will to continue with his
previous, shady lifestyle by Poncho (what intimidating person names
themselves after a lightweight rain jacket?!), a drug kingpin who
feels our leading man still owes him some favors. Poncho assigns
Devin to infiltrate and rob a local jewelry shop, because that seems
like the type of target underworld gangs tend to focus on.
Of course, our pal Devin falls for the
“stuck-up looking lady” from the original scene, aptly named Jade (and
played by Chaley Rose, who you may recognize from “Nashville”), and whose family owns the jewelry shop (of course) that he's being forced
to infiltrate. And infiltrate he does, by getting a job there,
allowing him to get in good with the rest of Jade's family. Whoa, can't see where this is headed! Could he possibly be torn between his love for Jade, and the shady job he's pretty much being forced to do? (Which he can’t just come clean and explain to her in advance, because, you know...logic.) Once
his shady past comes out, as we all know it has to do, will she
forgive him? Or let a case of miscommunication deter her from the man
that could very well be the love of her life? And what about her current boyfriend, who happens to be a cop, and who starts trying to dig up dirt on Devin?
As expected, this one can’t (or
doesn’t want to) avoid all the clichés of the dozens and dozens of
Christmas tales before it, so of course there has to be a lack of
communication leading to a blow-up fight, and the aforementioned cop boyfriend who suddenly turns evil, just so we can
cheer for him to get kicked to the curb. Aside from one of Jade's
friends, who is occasionally funny as the “loud black woman”
stereotype, much of the story is also played straight, which treads
dangerous waters for these types of movies, considering you can never take them too seriously.
But the cast is likable enough, and the
two leads have enough chemistry, to carry the tired, poorly-written story over the
finish line. It's nowhere near a “classic” in any sense of the
term, but it's above-average enough to be a valid time-waster for
those looking for a bit of uplifting holiday schmaltz.
RATING: 6/10
TRAILER
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