I was able to screen Black Nativity a few days ago. I was the only person in the theater with a bucket of popcorn and a soda. Being that it was a musical, I remembered shows like “Sesame Street” and movies like “The Sound of Music” and “Bed-knobs and Broomsticks”. My mom used to sing some of the tunes from the movies when I was young. She probably wouldn’t sing any of the songs from the sound track of “Black Nativity”. It would be much harder to hit the keys of the Mary J. Blige and Nas tracks included with this movie.
All in all I had fun watching the movie. It was inspirational and the ending had a real mainstream movie twist. Jennifer Hudson, the young mother in the movie and of American Idol fame had a track called “I Can’t Let Go” which was memorable. She was also in another good movie about music, “Dreamgirls” along side Beyoncé. In another kind of coincidence, a musician who bears the same name as me has a few scenes in the movie. Rotimi, a musician and actor played a police officer in this movie. He didn’t have any songs in the movie which is unfortunate because his song “Only Human” is a good aside to the inspirational theme of “Black Nativity”.
This movie is actually a play that was adapted to the big screen. Written by Langston Hughes a famous play-write of old. It had been adapted to screen once before in the 1960’s and played live in front of audiences many times as well. The basic plot follows a young African American youth in his struggle to earn a place back by his mom’s side by any means necessary when she loses their home. He stays in his uncle’s home during the movie. His uncle is a pastor and highly opinionated. We don’t find out till the end of the movie what caused the friction between the youth’s mother and her father, the uncle.
There is a happy ending as expected and along the way we are introduced to Christian theme’s such as the birth of Christ in both song and likeness. A pregnant street couple give’s birth to a baby in the Alley ways of New York using song as the medium. These plot fit’s well together so it won’t stand out as a religious affair. With such religiosity and racial commentary, I am surprised there has not been more news from people on either side of critical review. In my opinion the movie was worth the ticket price. I even stayed and watched the credits.
This is a movie review not social commentary. However, this movie did have some African American critics who did or did not like the movie. There wasn’t much promotion of the movie on TV or on the internet but I did see ads on buses and bus stops. Most likely this was because it is not the type of movie that is seen by general audiences. Coupled with it’s mature theme’s, musical genre and the market of mainly African American movie goers, it might have made a hard to sell. The movie has netted about 6 million in the box office which isn’t as much as blockbuster’s but was more than an empty theater at showtime might make one think.
