Even if you didn’t know Malcolm D. Lee’s The Best Man Holiday is a sequel to his
1999 ensemble comedy The Best Man,
the sense of camaraderie and friendship in the cast would stand out. The first
film was about a group of college friends reuniting, reconnecting, and
reenacting old tensions and jealousies at the wedding of one of their own. This
time, they’re reuniting for a Christmas celebration. One gets the sense that,
though they’ve kept in touch, this is really the first time in 14 years that
the whole group of them will be spending time together. They’ve got some
catching up to do. Time allows Lee the opportunity to make a rare sequel that’s
interested in how its characters have developed as people instead of simply
recreating situations of the past.
Here, the bride (Monica Calhoun) and groom (Morris Chestnut)
of the first film are happily married with a number of adorable small children.
He’s become a star player for the New York Giants, a position that’s made him
wealthy and famous. It’s they who invite the group to spend the holiday week at
their mansion, remembering old times and making new memories. It’s a movie that
leans on a sense of shared history that the entire ensemble sells wonderfully. The
cast has relaxed comfort with each other, allowing their characters to find the
easy rhythms, gentle needling, and still-simmering tensions that any group of
old friends would have.
On the guest list for the holidays are a writer (Taye Diggs)
and his pregnant wife (Sanaa Lathan), a TV news producer (Nia Long) and her new
boyfriend (Eddie Cibrian), an education non-profit entrepreneur (Harold
Perrineau) and his wife (Regina Hall), an unpredictable Real Housewife (Melissa
De Sousa), and a rascal of a brand manager (Terrence Howard). They aren’t the
struggling young adults they were all those years ago. Now, they have piles of
bills, professional obstacles, children, and all manner of fully-grown
obligations. Placing these characters in a big house and allow them to clash
and connect in a variety of ways makes for good comedy and good drama. Lee’s
screenplay is a silky smooth blend of gentle laughs, soft melodrama, and easy
emotion, featuring nice moments big and small for each and every member of the
cast.
As if aware that the holidays can be a hectic time, the
movie figures it may as well reward Christmastime viewers with a little bit of
everything. To suggest the overabundance of plot here, I’ll tell you that
Chestnut is nearing retirement, and the rushing yards record, and Diggs,
recently laid off from a gig teaching English and with a baby on the way, is
desperate to sell a new book. Perrineau has just learned a big donor won’t be
contributing his annual $2 million, an awful shortfall for a nonprofit. Long
thinks her boyfriend’s Christmas gift to her just might be a proposal, De Sousa
is starting to suspect her reality show stardom is interfering with her
parenting skills or lack thereof, Lathan’s worried about her long-awaited
pregnancy, and Howard just wants to crack jokes, drink, and slink away between
rounds of pool and beers to sext in peace.
Add to that Lee’s commitment to tracing the still-lingering
impact of events and revelations of the first film – past affairs, current
hookups, and a certain semi-autobiographical novel that ruffled the ensemble’s
feathers – and it’s clear the movie has a lot of ground to cover and subplots
to juggle. The farcical setup gives way to enough meaningful life moments
piling up in the back half that it could’ve powered a half-dozen Very Special
Episodes of any given sitcom. It’s all too much, but somehow works anyway.
The supremely likable cast is full of talents who have aged
into a greater sense of ease and comfort in their screen presences and with
their scene partners. There’s affection radiating every which way on screen
between characters and their performers that can’t help but drift out over the
audience. It’s easy to enjoy their company. The conversations they have
occasionally grow repetitive, but are always open to unexpected, sometimes
R-rated, detours that even when they aren’t working are at least something. Even
as the pleasant, undemanding, easygoing movie drifts into territory overwhelmingly
overtly sentimental and tear jerking, the relaxed attitudes and easy banter
only makes the sudden tough emotion crackle all the more.
There’s a striking moment in which Calhoun is struck by a
sudden burst of emotion, moved beyond words, listening to two cute kids singing
a Christmas hymn. The camera holds a medium shot as she leans closer, looms
larger, her eyes wet, her lips forming the lyrics to softly sing along. In one
little moment, the film communicates so much the importance of spending time
with loved ones and the value of holiday tradition, it’s excusable that the
overstuffed film rambles through so many big moments. It’s comically
overflowing with incident by the end, but it doesn’t short change the
characters or what they mean to each other.
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