‘The Best Man Holiday’

But every once in a while, along comes a movie that reminds you that the arts are an inherently collective enterprise. The Best Man Holiday is a good example.

For centuries, music and the performing arts were never something you’d experience alone (unless you were a musician yourself). But over the last several decades, the arts experience has grown more private and individualized. Movies morphed from silver-screen events to living-room cassettes and DVDs and, now, a solitary computer stream. We can’t even go to Blockbuster any more; it’s all right at our lonely fingertips. Live concerts gave way to radios and records and the ubiquitous mP3 player, which pipes customized playlists right to our ears all day long.

When you can rent any movie right from your living room to stream on your giant flat-screen TV, and rampant pirating enables you to view almost anything online, movie theaters feel the pressure. In the last year or two, a new kind of ad has begun playing between the movie trailers. It shows excerpts of some gorgeous new fantasy film that suddenly begin to shrink on the theater’s big screen. The sound dwindles to a tinny ghost as the action becomes confined to a tiny computer screen.

Sucker for a smile

The slogan is “Go Big or Go Home,” and it’s supposed to remind us that watching a film on a computer does an injustice to the spectacle of modern cinema. But by touting the big screen’s sensory thrills instead of the enjoyment of watching films in a large group, movie studios and theaters may fail to grasp the true heart of the movie-going habit.

In the case of The Best Man Holiday, I would be the first to argue that gorgeous folks like Taye Diggs, Morris Chestnut and Sanaa Lathan are worth seeing larger-than-life. I’ve been a sucker for Harold Perrineau’s blinding smile since I was 14. But watching this movie with a very appreciative audience made me remember what the movie theater experience really offers.

The marketers behind the Paranormal Activity franchise, whose horrifying satanic escapades couldn’t differ more from the wholesome (albeit adult) holiday fare of Best Man Holiday, also grasp the concept of what really entices our butts into the movie theater seats, year after year. Many ads for Paranormal Activity films showed not excerpts of the films, but footage of audiences shrieking in terror. That message transcends “This movie will scare the crap out of you.” It tells you that you need to experience this film alongside many other people.

Racial label

The Best Man Holiday, a sequel to the 1999 hit The Best Man, opened to quite a media kerfuffle earlier this month when a USA Today headline marveled at Holiday’s box-office success by calling it a “race-themed” film for no other reason than that the majority of the ensemble cast is African-American.

That label drew plenty of heated commentary as to why a heartfelt romantic comedy about friendship, grief, marriage and Christmas is “race-themed” merely because most of its actors are black.

Many of the audience members flocking to Holiday this month are fans of the original Best Man film, which brought a bunch of beautiful, ambitious friends and partners together for a wedding weekend in New York, where the best man (Harper) tries to keep the groom (Lance), a pro football player, from finding out that Harper slept with the bride back when they were both in college.

Christianity’s comeback

This time, the excellent original cast— also including Terrence Howard, Monica Calhoun, Melissa De Sousa, Regina Hall and Nia Long under returning writer/director Malcolm D. Lee— finds the same characters several years later, spending a Christmas weekend in their NFL pal’s cozy candle-lit mansion. The script and setting ooze with drama and holiday nostalgia to spare, but Lee still insists on pouring treacly classic Christmas tunes over most of the dialogue.

The story involves hilarious and painful revelations of past indiscretions, financial, career and family pressures and a couple medical crises. The film’s bold approach to faith puts characters earnestly on their knees and places Christianity at center stage (along with a White House-worthy Christmas tree), yet it portrays a record-setting NFL touchdown as a “Christmas miracle.”

“On Christmas, you play for Him,” Lance’s wife Mia says before the big game, as if this year Jesus is particularly invested in the score of the Giants game.

Pass the Kleenex

The plot is an emotional roller coaster ride, and everyone around me was strapped in firmly, popcorn and all. When I peeked at the man sitting next to us, he was wiping the tears off of his cheeks with both hands. The emotion swelled into such a juicy chorus of sniffs that I was tempted to ask an usher to bring a few boxes of Kleenex. The laughs hit just as hard, as well as the elated female hoots when the well-chiseled Lance pulled his shirt off. Other watchers applauded as if they were actually attending the football game in the movie.

But the experience was one of such collective enjoyment that I never thought of whispering “Sshhh!” or even giving anyone the evil eye in the dark. I’m no particular fan of romantic comedies, but seeing Best Man Holiday in public instead of on my living room couch took me outside my own experience of the film. It reminded me of the real reason we love to go to the movies.