Black Nativity Reviews



  • Black Nativity
    • Genre : Drama, Family
    • Release Date :
    • MPAA Rating : PG
    • Duration : 93 minute(s)
    • Production Budget : -
    • Studio : Fox Searchlight Pictures
    • Official Site : http://www.blacknativitymovie.com/
    • Reviews Rate
      Nothing's perfect, but it's worth seeing.

    • Readers Rate
      N/A

Movie Reviews

  • the movie - seemed like such a good idea. But it struggles mightily. You can feel it
    by Betsy Sharkey [LA Times ]
  • the entire movie feels like a Nativity pageant, with heavily symbolic characters and equally evident spiritual messages
    2 of 5 by Elizabeth Weitzman [NY Daily News ]
  • soundtrack will be a welcome addition to a Christmas playlist, especially the assembled choir's roof-raising final number, Stevie Wonder's classic "As." It can't erase the bad vibes from the script, but it guarantees you'll leave the theatre smiling
    2 of 4 by Linda Barnard [Toronto Star ]
  • rousing musical numbers and a well-meaning, if predictable, story, marked by unlikely coincidences. Climactic revelations take place during a church service, something not often seen in Hollywood studio movies
    2.5 of 4 by Claudia Puig [USA Today ]
  • miscalculates by planting this African-American interpretation of the nativity story at the center of an angsty troubled-teen melodrama that, from mean-streets prologue to Christmas Eve climax, simply fails to inspire belief
    by Justin Chang [Variety ]
  • looks a bit like a local holiday pageant featuring the best talent imaginable set on screen. It's both unique and completely appropriate
    Review rate : B by Tom Long [Detroit News ]
  • Kasi Lemmons's adaptation is a double disservice: Needlessly expanding on a simple but sensible conceit, the resulting film is both sickly sweet and about as exciting as squirming in a church pew while the most monotonous of ministers holds forth
    2 of 4 by David Berry [The Montreal Gazette ]
  • it's a sweet-natured tale that goes down smoothly, and Lemmons ("Eve's Bayou") has done an admirable job of putting a contemporary spin on the beloved Hughes seasonal favorite from the '60s
    3 of 4 by Randy Myers [San Jose Mercury News ]
  • is a just-OK feature film that, as an hour-long television special, could have had the makings of a classic
    by Mick LaSalle [San Francisco Chronicle ]
  • a first-rate cast enlivens this ambitious but syrupy holiday musical
    by Stephen Farber [Hollywood Reporter ]
  • Reviewed by Manohla Dargis [NY Times ]

Reader's Reviews

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