Morris Chestnut

  • The Perfect Holiday (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2022) In the very special realm of Christmas movies, The Perfect Holiday is better than most, and yet a substandard film in general. It does boast of an order-of-magnitude bigger budget than most of the straight-to-Hallmark stuff, and that shows in the calibre of the actors featured here—Queen Latifah and Terrence Howard as sort-of-narrators of a framing device, plus Gabrielle Union and Morris Chestnut as the film’s true leads, as well as notables such as Faizon Love, Katt Williams and Rachel True in smaller roles. The script is slightly more ambitious as well, with a tangled web of relationships and professional ambitions (in music, alas—a field where luck reigns supreme except in movie depictions of the music industry). It was even a theatrical release, although it flopped upon release and that explains why you probably never heard of it. If you, by mid-December, are burnt out by the slew of repetitive Christmas movies that seem to take over TV channels, then The Perfect Holiday will feel like a slight breath of fresh air. It tries to do a little bit more, it reuses a formula but not the same formula, and while Lance Rivera’s direction isn’t particularly notable, he’s working with much better crew than most Christmas films. I enjoyed watching the film for the wrong reasons: I’ve been a fan of Gabrielle Union for the past twenty years, and it had been a while since I last saw her in a substantial role, so this was a small treat even if I’ll be the first to say that her role could have been much, much better. On the larger scale for Christmas films, The Perfect Holiday ranks as “slightly better than innocuous,” which is not terrible but shouldn’t mean a must-see either… especially if it’s anytime from December 27 to December 7.

  • When the Bough Breaks (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, September 2022) Frankly, I’ve seen enough BET original movies that the only surprising thing about When the Bough Breaks is that I didn’t see it on BET. Otherwise, it scrupulously follows one of their formulas—or is it one of the Lifetime channel formulas? Suffice to say that the story starts when a married couple hires a surrogate to have a baby and, well, you can probably see where this is going: the surrogate falls in love with the male lead, reveals her psychotic nature and it’s up to our married leads to deal with the situation. (Although you really won’t be surprised to learn that it’s the woman who definitely deals with it.)  Plot-wise, this is really a mild made-for-TV potboiler (not too disturbing, though, considering the target audience) that benefits from better actors and more budget for production values. It doesn’t exactly work: as much as I like Regina Hall and Morris Chestnut, and even if Jaz Sinclair is a beauty, the film plods along intensely predictable lines, with the antagonist being nothing more than a bunch of screenwriting clichés without an inner life. But it also approaches distaste in revolving around surrogate pregnancy—When the Bough Breaks is simply not good enough, smart enough or worthy enough to play around with complex issues such as that one, and feels increasingly cheap as it raises the stakes through threatened abortion or infanticide. (And that’s before we get into unpleasant implications of seeing a wealthy lead couple fighting against a markedly less fortunate surrogate.)  In doing so, it also becomes decidedly un-fun, which is not insignificant in terms of made-for-TV movies: Part of why they work on preposterous premises, low budgets and dubious production values is that they’re essentially meaningless—you can simply enjoy them without really worrying about the characters. The more When the Bough Breaks tries for real suspense (not that it actually succeeds), the less fun it becomes, at which point we’re left to ask—why bother? Maybe BET understood that in not broadcasting this one.

  • Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004)

    Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2020) The only question anyone can have about Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid is not “Is it as good as Anaconda?” (Because, clearly, that’s impossible) as much as it’s “Well, is it fun to watch?” Clearly, we’re not in arthouse territory when a film reassembles all of the elements of the 1997 snakesploitation film (young attractive people; a jungle; gigantic snakes) and gives it another bigger go. The special effects are more digital than they were in the first film; there are more snakes, the “prize” hunted by the protagonist is a longevity elixir, and the cast is clearly pulled from the minor leagues. But, if you’re in the mood for a bog-standard monster feature, Anacondas should do the trick. KaDee Strickland is no J-Lo, Morris Chestnut isn’t Ice Cube and the almost-accidental cheesiness of the first film isn’t quite duplicated here, but the film delivers the kills, the snake, the adventures and the sweaty jungle that we could expect from a follow-up. That still doesn’t make it good compared to the countless other movies you could be watching instead, but if you’re dead set on “snake thriller,” then I guess no one can stop you from watching Anacondas.