'The Best Man Holiday,' or Blacks Are People, Too

IN “The Best Man Holiday,” the long-awaited sequel to “The Best Man” (1999), college friends reunite for the first time since the wedding of two in their group.

The film, which opens today in the United States and Canada, has echoes of “The Big Chill,” “Friends,” and less animated upmarket Tyler Perry fare (See video at top).

To the extent that “The Best Man Holiday” is remarkable is because it stars a mainly all-black cast. Director Malcolm Lee's script is middling at best, yet even at this juncture of the struggle of blacks for equality in every facet of life in the United States, it is still a welcome novelty to see blacks presented as real people rather than caricatures.

As persons a body knows, rather than creatures dreamt up in the muddled minds of the sadly misguided and misinformed. Here is just another slice of black life. Alas, one that is obscenely under-represented in the entertainment industry.

Indeed, something other than the rigid confines of hoods and hoes, mammies and murderers, buffoons and bitches, the loud and lewd. Images with which most inside and outside of this country have become intimately familiar. A sorry sad-sack state of affairs … More shortly

"The Best Man Holiday" is rated R for language, sexual content and brief nudity; visit http://www.best-man.com/social/ to learn more about the film.