Black Nativity (2013)Movies

Very nominally “based on the play by Langston Hughes’’ (as the credits claim), Kasi Lemmons’ “Black Nativity’’ is a family-friendly, Hallmark Channel-ready musical dramatic fable whose plot more closely resembles Spike Lee’s “Red Hook Summer.’’

Pop singer Jacob Latimore acquits himself well as 15-year-old Langston, sent to spend Christmas with his grandparents in modern-day Harlem after his financially struggling single mom (Jennifer Hudson) loses their home in Baltimore.

Named after the famous Harlem poet-playwright, Langston is unhappy about being uprooted. And he nurses a grudge against his minister grandpa (Forest Whitaker) and grandma (Angela Bassett), whom he’s never met before, because the elders have not spoken...