“The Best Man Holiday” far exceeded expectations coming in No. 2 during its opening weekend earning just over $30 million.  This post will NOT be a review of the movie, as I told my Facebook friends that I would give them one week (until November 23) to see the movie before I posted about it.  So if you haven’t seen it, you can keep reading as there are no spoilers. 🙂

TBMH was an excellent movie.  Probably exceptional.   I was happy to see the growth and depth of each character.  And I can’t remember ANY movie causing me to feel every emotion imaginable.  And judging from others’ comments, I don’t think I am the only person that feels that way.  Black moviegoers have been trying to tell Hollywood for YEARS that we would like to see us in much more diverse roles.  We’re more than servants or sidekicks or sex kittens.  We are people who have our own stories of triumph and of fears to share…without being in someone else’s shadow.  And if “The Best Man Holiday” didn’t teach us anything else, it taught us that Black people have more than one story to tell.

Some people may think that with the success of a sequel 14 years in the making that most of our beloved movies from the late 1990s/early 2000s deserve a sequel so that we can see what happened to Darius and Nina from “Love Jones”, Sidney and Andre from “Brown Sugar” or Quincy and Monica from “Love and Basketball”.  Well, let me tell you a secret-we don’t.  We don’t even need a Part 3 to “The Best Man”.  Although “Bad Boys 2” came out almost 10 years after the original and did fairly well in the box office, it really wasn’t necessary.  And even though I thorougly enjoyed “Think Like A Man”, “Think Like a Man Too” is overkill.

For the next 3-5 years, we do not need to see an influx of sequels of movies with Blacks as the main characters for moviegoers to see in the theatres.  We need new and different stories to be told.  For example, former NFL player and current director/writer/producer Matthew Cherry is currently working on his next film “Game Time Decision”, which focuses on the decisions and possible consequences, good and bad, that need to be made when players enter into the NFL.

So, let’s not only challenge ourselves; let’s challenge Hollywood to make new movies that tell our story.  We don’t live our lives in circles, so why should we see our movies that way?  We are constantly changing and evolving and growing.  And it’s up to us to dare Hollywood to the do the same.  Until next time, I’m just a Southern girl…in the city.

Related articles

• 10 Classic Black Films We’d Love To See Sequels For (huffingtonpost.com)
• USA Today Draws Fire, Backs Off ‘Race-Themed’ Headline on Box-Office Story (thewrap.com)
• Sequels Sometimes A Bad Thing (undergradreviews.wordpress.com)
• Morris Chestnut Pretty Much Confirms A Third “Best Man” (madamenoire.com)