Movie Review: The Best Man Holiday (2013)

the-best-man-holiday-movie-posterThe Best Man Holiday

four and a half stars

The Best Man Holiday is the unexpected sequel to the 1999 movie, The Best Man. In the Best Man Holiday, the all star cast returns to reprise their rolls and reunite after 14 years. While a bit of the movie was hard to swallow, for the most part, The Best Man Holiday did as well as the original.

Star football player Lance (Morris Chestnut), invites his friends to his home for a reunion. There we meet with Harper (Taye Diggs), who was a bestselling author for a bit, and now just wants to be a bestselling author again. There’s Jordan (Nia Long), a Manhattan businesswoman; trophy wife Shelby (Melissa De Sousa), Quentin (Terrence Howard); and Mia (Monica Calhoun), Lance’s wife. The super attractive cast all gathers together to squabble over stuff they should have gotten over 14 years ago, as well as reveal a few personal tragedies.

As this is a movie where I’m feeling half and half, i.e., I sort of liked it, but I sort of hated it too, let’s get started by breaking it into the good and the bad.

The good. The cast is just as good as they were 10 years ago. Diggs is capable as Harper, an intellectual who actually makes you forget how hot he is. Chestnut plays Lance’s seething resentment of Harper well. De Sousa is a fabulously obnoxious star of a ‘real housewives’ franchise and Calhoun is still the perfect girl next door. [more…]

The Best Man Holiday is a bit darker and more serious than the original. This makes sense as the characters are older and dealing with more grown up issues. This time around, the problems the characters are dealing with are life or death, as opposed to just embarrassing or petty. In short, the sequel, much like the actors, is much more mature than the original. As a semi-spoiler, one of the characters has a terminal illness.

BMH

Now the bad. Have you ever had a friend who still talks about what happened to them in high school or college and you just wanted to scream ‘get over it!”? This movie will make you want to scream ‘get over it’ more than once. I mean, it’s been 14 years. If you can’t let infidelity go after 14 flippin’ years, just get a damn divorce.

Also, I found it a bit hard to swallow that everyone is a success. When was the last time you met up with your old college friends and learned that every single one of them had made a million dollars…especially after the 2008 recession and collapse of the housing market? I mean really.

The Best Man Holiday

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Finally, I know this is a common theme in Malcolm D. Lee movies, but the religion really got over the top. Eye-rolling over the top. ‘God’ might have been mentioned more than the word ‘motherfucker’ in this installment, and that’s saying something.

Of course, I still have to respect the maturity brought to the screen. I was a big fan of the original, so The Best Man Holiday was a surprising sequel pleasure. While a bit of it seems contrived, the characters have really grown up since their last movie. If you were a fan of The Best Man (or if you just like looking at Taye Diggs), The Best Man Holiday is a must see movie for you this Christmas.

If you’ve seen the movie – Rate it and Earn some Points!!  Here is he Movie Trailer below

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