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
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
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
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
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