Black Nativity is a jubilant experience.

| Mar 21, 2017

All of Black Nativity proceeds with sort of clumsy obviousness.

| Dec 10, 2013

To my eyes, Black Nativity is the cinematic equivalent of a Christmas tree ornament: shiny, hollow, sheathed in decorative, artificial linings, mass-produced and, given the cost of today's movie theater tickets, overpriced.

| Dec 9, 2013

By the time the credits rolled, my eyes were sore from all the rolling.

| Dec 9, 2013

You'd have to be pretty full of seasonal humbug to resist this ...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 8, 2013

An inept, often ludicrous, take on Langston Hughes' 1961 musical-play.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 6, 2013

Points for dogged credulity: whether trying to pass off Times Square as Judea or Tyrese "Fast & Furious" Gibson as the Angel Gabriel, it sincerely believes it. You, of course, are at liberty not to.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 5, 2013

It's a misguided enterprise all round, and while it's perfectly possible to applaud everything the film wants to say, you find yourself cringing at the ways it's saying it.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 5, 2013

Despite the odd rip-roaring tune and some sturdy performances, this yuletide tale is as memorable as last year's sprouts.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 1, 2013

Even the movie's most wretched characters glow in the Harlem lamplight.

| Nov 28, 2013

Earnest, square and proudly evangelical, "Black Nativity" is so unusual that its rough aspects are easy to forgive.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 28, 2013

Takes Hughes' nativity story and shoves it into the far background of a sincere but tritely told modern drama about family, faith, and redemption.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 28, 2013

The bare-bones plot, propped up by redundant R&B tunes, hinges on revelations so obvious, you won't need a prophet to call them out.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 27, 2013

A hybrid of Hallmark Hall of Fame and Glee, Lemmons' muddled adaptation is neither fish nor fowl, a filmmaking choice that denies Black Nativity much of its emotional potential.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Nov 27, 2013

Its pastoral ambitions compensate for its lack of finesse.

| Original Score: 6.8/10 | Nov 27, 2013

By the time the film reaches its biblically inspired dreamscape of a climax, "Black Nativity" qualifies as equal parts surreal and stirring.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 27, 2013

Kasi Lemmons' contemporary adaptation is an uplifting holiday extravaganza with a musical score filled with familiar spiritual standards plus some new songs by Raphael Saadiq and Laura Karpman that underscore themes of faith, healing and family.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 27, 2013

Almost every beat of Langston's tale, with its absent father figures and heated gun-pointing melodrama, rings false-hardly a fitting contemporary complement to the Greatest Story Ever Told.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 27, 2013

The corny, greeting-card feel of the second half weakens what begins as a creatively rendered take on a holiday film.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 27, 2013

Hudson soars (duh) on the vocal numbers, and Whitaker (double duh) is a tower of integrity and crushingly human. But "Black Nativity" isn't about stars, it's about unity, faith and family. As such it shines.

| Original Score: B | Nov 27, 2013