Hip Hop Holiday (2019)

(On TV, December 2020) One of BET television’s 2019 Christmastime offerings is Hip Hop Holiday, a romantic comedy set during the holidays within the world of Hip-Hop showbiz. Trina Braxton stars as an initially unbearable diva who gets a gradual personality change thanks to the reappearance of an old flame. As is often the case with those bad-girls-redeemed-by-good-men tales (or the gender-flipped reverse), there’s a feeling that everything that made the character interesting is gradually stripped away by the ongoing romance, until, at the end, we’re left with a near-lobotomized version of the person we started with. That’s not being against personality growth in movie narratives – it’s wishing that something more interesting would replace the abrasive hellion that we start with. The same goes for the film in general: while the world of Hip-Hop makes for a decent backdrop to the action, this too gradually disappears throughout the film to focus almost exclusively on the mini-universe of the romantic couple. This doesn’t help Hip Hop Holiday overcome the usual problems with Christmas romances – the foreordained conclusion, slap-dash dialogue, lower production budget and heavy reliance on audience goodwill. Hip Hop Holiday is certainly acceptable (especially as background noise), but there’s nothing here to warrant sustained attention.