Review by Bob Ignizio
Given that I'm white and an atheist,
it's probably fair to say I'm not the target audience for BLACK
NATIVITY, the second of three
African-American Christmas movies being released this year. But you
know what? Whether the filmmakers were aiming for me or not, they won
me over.
Although
ostensibly based on the play of the same name by Langston Hughes,
BLACK NATIVITY gives
barely a nod to its source material, an Africanized telling of the
birth of Jesus. Instead, it tells a new story about Langston Cobbs
(Jacob Lattimore), a young man whose mother Naima (Jennifer Hudson)
named him after the famous writer/poet. As the film begins, these two
are being evicted from their home in Baltimore. Seeing few options,
Naima sends her son to live with his grandparents, the Reverend
Cornell Cobbs (Forest Whitaker) and his wife Angela (Angela
Bassett), while she tries to scrape together enough money for a new
place to live.
