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This Christmas
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MPAA RATING: PG-13 for comic sexual content and some violence
Starring Delroy Lindo, Idris Elba, Loretta Devine, Chris Brown, Keith Robinson, Laz Alonso, Mekhi Phifer, and Regina King
This year, Christmas with the Whitfields promises to be one they will never forget. All the siblings have come home for the first time in years and they've brought plenty of baggage with them. As the Christmas tree is trimmed and the lights are hung, secrets are revealed and family bonds are tested. As their lives converge, they join together and help each other discover the true meaning of family. (Sony)
| GENRE(S): | Drama |
| WRITTEN BY: | Preston A. Whitmore, II |
| DIRECTED BY: | Preston A. Whitmore, II |
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: November 11, 2008 Theatrical: November 21, 2007 |
| RUNNING TIME: | 117 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: | USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The average user rating for this movie is 6.0 (out of 10) based on 14 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Jay H. gave it a5:
Fair Christmas story, uneasily mixes heavy drama with comedy. Rather predictable and tends to use cliches in the story. The acting is fine, no one is great though.
D D. gave it an8:
Excellent, the kids can even watch this one.
Josh C. gave it a1:
A holiday melodrama suffering from severe bloat, This Christmas concerns the reunion of the Whitfield family, a clan dealing with so many dilemmas that it's a wonder they ever get to sit down for Christmas dinner. They do, of course, and Preston A. Whitmore II's film is best when it focuses on the spirituality of saying pre-meal grace and the ensuing, chatter-filled feasts, instances that exude a genuineness that's otherwise sorely lacking from this overstuffed grab bag of conflicts and romantic affairs. A soldier (Columbus Short) gone AWOL, a jazz saxophonist (Idris Elba) on the run from bookies, a wife (Regina King) dealing with a cheating husband (Laz Alonso), a young man (Chris Brown) yearning to fulfill his dream of being a singer, and a matriarch (Loretta Devine) struggling to keep her family and long-term boyfriend (Delroy Lindo) happy are just a few of the plotlines jammed into this tale's two-hour runtime. Whitmore spends virtually every available second entangling his pleasant but rather clichéd characters in—and then extricating them from—quandaries. And the film would have been better served with fewer narrative threads and far more inventiveness. This is most readily apparent in the case of Lisa (King) and Malcolme (Alonso), whose marital problems are both broadly conceived and then resolved via some easy Angela Bassett/Waiting to Exhale retribution. Yet it generally applies to the amiable proceedings as a whole, since the writer-director is ultimately more interested in dishing out unadventurous, heartwarming mush than anything that might qualify as challenging, unexpected, or even boisterous. Whitmore guides his conventional material with a competent hand, and there's nothing disagreeable about his cast's uniformly sturdy turns, but with so few surprises, This Christmas eventually winds up feeling like a lot of past ones.
Joshua D. gave it a10:
An all around outstanding phenomenal film. I enjoyed every second of the drama, the comedy, and the relation of the modern world this film possesses.
Daniel G. gave it a10:
"This Christmas" was a humorous, sweet and heartfelt glance at the interactions of a family during Christmastime, and the lives of the individual members.
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