Your Black Cinemist At Large was on her j-o-b this weekend, having seen both "The Perfect Holiday" and "I Am Legend". Since I am not up to 100% yet, I'll write about the former one today, as I'm sure it's still a little too early to give spoilers on the latter. Plus I have a lot more to say about "I Am Legend", so I'll wait a couple more days.
I went into "The Perfect Holiday" with zero expectations, to say the least. I mean, I'm not afraid to say it, I am not the biggest Latifah fan, and the director's last handiwork was "The Cookout", what I consider to be possibly the most abysmal black film ever made in history. Lance "Un" Rivera started his career as a rap mogul, whose most famous claim to fame was being supposedly stabbed by Jay-Z....but I digress.
I find it very unfortunate that this film had a dismal showing at the box office, (early predictions were less than $3 million total), 'cause to my very great surprise, I actually enjoyed it. Seriously. No one was more surprised than me.
Since it's easier for me to give observations as opposed to reviews, I'll just do that. It is, I guess, in a way, a sort of capsule review....and also kind of a lazy mini cop-out, haha.
-One thing that bowled me over was that Charlie Murphy, playing a self centered Jay-Z type rapper, is now officially funnier in every way than his brother Eddie. Who saw that coming?
-Speaking of funny, Faizon Love is finally returning to his earlier promises of hilarity he touched on with "Big Worm" in "Friday". My man got in some serious zinger time.
-Gabrielle Union is not much of an actress, but she is starting to grow on me, and sometimes I find her pretty charming, and definitely a pleasure to look at...she has the most marvelous skin I've ever seen. Pass that secret on, girl!
-There were only a couple instances of side-eye; the soundtrack could sometimes get very loud and out of place (a la "The Cookout", work on that, Lance), and also the stylist in me noticed and was distracted by a couple of wildly inappropriate outfits...but when I saw the "Costume Designer" was Misa Hilton-Brimm, Puffy's first baby's mama, it made more sense. She is singlehandedly responsible for the whole 'ghetto fabulous' look, beginning with Lil' Kim and continuing on from there.
-Morris Chestnut is so fine, he is almost painful to look at. Gawtdayum! Nuff said....it doesn't even matter what came out of his mouth or how he performed (satisfactorily, by the way).
-I really, really, like Rachel True (Half & Half). She seems so cool, sweet, and "peace and love". You can even believe her being cool enough to get with Faizon Love, which she does in this.
-Gabrielle and Morris had real and genuine on-screen black love chemistry...VERY refreshing to see.
-The kids had just the right amount of sassiness, without being brats or getting on your nerves; (can anybody say "Are We There Yet?"-yikes) they almost seemed like real-life children.
-My man Katt Williams was in it, with only one or two hair processes instead of six, haha.
-King Latifah and Terrence Howard seemed to be there strictly for marquee value only...they had absolutely nothing to do with the story, tho Terrence was just as surly as ever....and he literally had about 2 lines of dialogue. I mean, why bother?
Lance Rivera either went to film school after that "Cookout" travesty, or he sat down and watched every holiday and Doris Day film ever made back to back, and copied their look and feel verbatim. And lo behold, it worked.
I was talking to someone the other day about how I would absolutely love to see a film with an all black cast, that didn't make a whole big deal about being "BLACK". That it just told a story, but the cast could easily be replaced by any ethnicity. This is one of those films; it reminded me of any garden variety Doris Day/Rock Hudson film that I used to watch growing up, and I loved it. All of the characters of this film were interchangeable with any of those in Doris' movies, and I enjoyed every minute of it.
That is the exact reason why I feel so bad about how this film is performing....there was a crystal clear bootleg copy available to the public the same day it opened, and since this movie doesn't have the crossover appeal of "American Gangster", it was doomed to fail, as a whole household can pay to see it for $5.00.
Bootleg can be the devil folkses.
I mean, we have a film that is charming, minimal coon, fairly intelligent, that looks like some actual money and effort were put in. A film that has good looking, positive, articulate folks; a family oriented script with a little sexiness thrown in, with a production value that is crisp, clean and beautiful, not to mention well-edited. Isn't this what we've been saying over and over we want to see?
And guess what? It's going to do buttkist at the boxoffice.
So next time those of you who buy bootleg before paying box office, think about where the problem lies when we can't get the "YT" studios to support and distribute black film. It called C.R.E.A.M.**
And it's as simple as that.
**c..r.e.a.m.=cash rules everything around me
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