Almost Christmas (2016)

Almost Christmas opens with a funeral. Grace Meyers is dead, and the family she spent decades holding together is already coming apart at the seams. Her husband Walter, played by Danny Glover with the weary patience of a man who has buried the love of his life and now has to referee his adult children, invites all four kids home to Birmingham, Alabama for Christmas. Five days together. That's all he asks. The tagline puts it best: "Five days together? Oh joy."

David E. Talbert wrote and directed the 2016 film, his fourth feature, and he understood something fundamental about holiday family comedies: the comedy only works if the dysfunction feels real. The Meyers family is not quirky. They are wounded. And they cope the way most families cope: badly, loudly, and with a lot of food.

The Almost Christmas Cast

The cast of Almost Christmas is stacked. Danny Glover carries the emotional weight as Walter, a retired widower who just wants his children to get along for one holiday. Glover plays Walter with a quiet dignity that grounds every scene he's in. When the chaos escalates around him, which it does constantly, his stillness becomes the most powerful thing on screen.

Mo'Nique plays Aunt May, the scene-stealing sister-in-law who arrives with opinions, volume, and a take-no-prisoners approach to family gatherings. Mo'Nique got the role after Talbert wrote it specifically for her, and she turns every scene into a highlight reel. Her delivery during the dinner sequences alone is worth the runtime.

Gabrielle Union is Rachel, the overachieving eldest daughter whose marriage is falling apart. Kimberly Elise plays Cheryl, the responsible sister holding everyone else's mess while ignoring her own. Omar Epps is Malachi, a former football star nursing old injuries and resentment. Romany Malco rounds out the siblings as Christian, a local politician running for Congress whose campaign has made him insufferable.

JB Smoove and John Michael Higgins provide comic relief as the brothers-in-law, each out of their depth in different ways. Jessie T. Usher plays Evan, the college-age son caught between his father's expectations and his own path. Nicole Ari Parker appears as Christian's wife Sonya, who has her own reasons for being fed up.

What Almost Christmas Gets Right About Family Grief

The film's central engine is not Christmas itself but the absence of Grace. Walter is trying to recreate her famous sweet potato pie from memory, and he can't get it right. The pie becomes a metaphor, one the film handles with more subtlety than you might expect. Walter doesn't announce that the pie represents his wife's love or the family's lost unity. He just keeps trying to bake it. The audience does the rest.

Each sibling is grieving differently. Cheryl has taken on the caretaker role and is burning out. Rachel buries herself in control. Malachi drinks. Christian runs for office. None of them are talking about it, which is exactly how grief works in most families. The movie doesn't offer a tidy resolution to this. Walter gets his pie right on Christmas Day, the family gathers around the table, and the loss is still there. It's just bearable now.

Comedy, Chaos, and the Almost Christmas Dinner

Talbert has a background in stage plays, and it shows in how he blocks his ensemble scenes. The family dinner sequences have the energy of live theater: overlapping dialogue, physical comedy, and a sense that anything could go wrong at any moment. A Thanksgiving flashback early in the film establishes the family's capacity for spectacular arguments, and the movie keeps raising the stakes from there.

The comedy is broad but effective. Mo'Nique's Aunt May feuding with a neighbor (played by an uncredited D.C. Young Fly in some of the improvised exchanges) produces genuine laughs. JB Smoove, a veteran of Curb Your Enthusiasm, brings his trademark manic energy to every scene. The physical comedy at times tilts toward slapstick, but the performers are skilled enough to sell it.

Where the film stumbles is in trying to service too many subplots. Christian's congressional race, Rachel's marital problems, Malachi's football career regrets, and Evan's romantic interest all compete for screen time in a 111-minute movie. Some threads get resolved in minutes. Christian's campaign storyline, in particular, feels like it belongs in a different film.

Almost Christmas Film in Context

Almost Christmas arrived in November 2016 and earned $42 million domestically against a $17 million budget. It joined a growing tradition of Black ensemble holiday films that includes The Best Man Holiday (2013), This Christmas (2007), and The Preacher's Wife (1996). These films serve an audience that mainstream Hollywood holiday movies have historically ignored, and they consistently outperform their budgets.

Talbert, who started as a playwright staging productions for predominantly Black audiences, brought that theatrical energy to his direction. The film feels like a family reunion you've been invited to: chaotic, warm, occasionally exhausting, and anchored by food. The Birmingham, Alabama setting gives it a Southern texture that distinguishes it from the usual New York or suburban Chicago holiday backdrop.

The Verdict

Almost Christmas is not a perfect film. It has too many subplots, some of the comedy leans too broad, and the third act wraps up conflicts at a pace that suggests the writers were checking off boxes. But Danny Glover's quiet performance holds it together, Mo'Nique is a force of nature, and the film's treatment of grief within a holiday comedy is more honest than most entries in the genre attempt.

The final scene, Walter standing in his kitchen on Christmas morning with the pie finally right and his children finally in the same room without yelling, lands because the movie earned it. Not with a speech. With a pie.