General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

The Perfect Holiday

The Perfect Holiday is a 2007 American Christmas romantic comedy directed by Lance Rivera, starring Morris Chestnut as a department-store Santa who falls for a divorced mother played by Gabrielle Union, with Queen Latifah and Terrence Howard as feuding holiday spirits.¹ It was distributed by Yari Film Group Releasing and opened in Los Angeles and New York on December 12, 2007.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director / writers	Lance Rivera; screenplay by Lance Rivera, Marc Calixte, Nat Mauldin, and Jeff Stein¹
Lead cast	Morris Chestnut (Benjamin), Gabrielle Union (Nancy), Faizon Love (Jamal), Terrence Howard (Bah-Humbug), Queen Latifah (Mrs. Christmas)¹
Release	December 12, 2007, wide; rated PG; 95 minutes per AFI (listed as 1h 36m elsewhere)¹^•²
Production	Flavor Unit Films, Truenorth, and Capital Arts Entertainment; producers include Queen Latifah; music by Christopher Lennertz¹
Box office	$5.8 million gross in the United States²
Critical reception	19% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (58 reviews); Metascore 32, "Generally Unfavorable," on Metacritic²^•⁹
Alternate title	The Perfect Christmas¹

Spoilers

Plot

Nancy Taylor (Gabrielle Union) is a divorced mother of three who feels lonely during the holidays; all she wants for Christmas is to meet a nice man, even just a compliment.⁴ Her youngest daughter, Emily (Khail Bryant), overhears the wish and shares it with the shopping-mall Santa, who is Benjamin Armstrong (Morris Chestnut), a talented but struggling songwriter working part-time in the red suit. Benjamin decides to make her wish come true himself.⁴^•⁵

Conflict comes from Nancy's ex-husband, the rap mogul J-Jizzy (Charlie Murphy), a Scrooge-like figure with no time for his children, and from the oldest son, ten-year-old John-John (Malik Hammond), who schemes against his mother's new boyfriend in the hope his parents will reunite.⁵ The story is narrated by Queen Latifah in the magical role of Mrs. Christmas, opposite Terrence Howard as a hard-to-dislike Scrooge-ish character named Bah-Humbug.⁵ Roger Ebert, the longtime Chicago Sun-Times critic, described the film as built on meet cutes, mistaken identities, rebounding fibs, a Santa operating under false pretenses, a nasty rapper, a 300-pound elf, and three cute kids.⁶

Production and release

The film was written and directed by Lance Rivera, with a screenplay credited to Rivera, Marc Calixte, Nat Mauldin, and Jeff Stein, and a story by Rivera and Calixte.¹ It was produced by Mike Elliott, Joseph P. Grenier, Marvin Peart, Shakim Compere, Queen Latifah, and Leifur B. Dagfinnsson for Flavor Unit Films, Truenorth, and Capital Arts Entertainment, with Theodoro Maniaci as cinematographer, Paul Trejo as editor, and a score by Christopher Lennertz.¹ The supporting cast includes Faizon Love, Charlie Murphy, Katt Williams, Rachel True, and Jill Marie Jones.⁵

The film opened wide on December 12, 2007, rated PG for brief language and suggestive humor, and grossed $5.8 million in the United States.¹^•² It was released on DVD on November 11, 2008, and on streaming platforms on April 16, 2012.⁷^•² It has since circulated on subscription services including Starz and, at various times, Netflix.⁷^•⁸

Reception

Critics received the film poorly. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 19% Tomatometer from 58 reviews, with the site's critics consensus calling it "the perfect example of Christmas movie clichés run amok," while audiences rated it 52% on the Popcornmeter from more than 100,000 ratings.² On Metacritic it scored 32 out of 100, "Generally Unfavorable," based on 22 critic reviews: 3 positive, 6 mixed, and 13 negative.³

Reviewers faulted the film's reliance on formula. John Anderson in Variety called it "neither perfect nor much of a holiday," stale and predictable.³ Stephen Holden in The New York Times compared watching it to pulling broken plastic toys from a Christmas stocking.⁹ The Hollywood Reporter's Michael Rechtshaffen wrote that if This Christmas served a crowd-pleasing portion of yuletide "Soul Food," then The Perfect Holiday offered dried-out leftovers.³ Some reviews were warmer: Roger Ebert found it unoriginal but played with high spirits and good cheer, pitched straight at families, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer judged that viewers in the mood for a sweet and simple Christmas movie would find it fit the bill.³ The film received two BET Award nominations.⁹

Other uses of the title

A separate German film titled The Perfect Holiday (Der perfekte Urlaub), directed by Bora Dagtekin as a sequel to 2019's The Perfect Secret, was in post-production as of May 26, 2026, with an October 2026 theatrical release set in Germany.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2007 to 2008 › Released in 2007

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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