Queen Latifa’s ‘Last Holiday’ is an innocuous little film that really goes out of it’s way not to offend anyone, lying squarely in the middle of the road.  It’s not a good movie, nor is it a bad one.  It’s as safe piece of fluffy family entertainment that you may like, or you may not like, but you’ll definitely forget it a couple of hours after watching it.

The Queen is Georgia Byrd, a dowdy, overweight, hard working, gourmet cooking sales clerk at the local big chain superstore.  Georgia tries to do everything right.  She sings in the choir, she watches her wayward sisters kids, works in the homeless shelter, and is always on time for her job.  She wants more out of life, particularly the hunky sporting sales clerk (James Todd Smith) who she has creepily pasted photos of him and her onto a bride and groom in a wedding album she has created, but alas she is too shy to do anything about it.

Things take a terrible turn for Georgia when she discovers that she has a rare brain disease and only three weeks to live.  Realizing her safe existence has gotten her absolutely nowhere, Georgia chucks it all, buys a first class ticket Prague, and decides to live the rest of life in style. 

Once in she arrives in Prague ,Georgia’s life takes off as she does things she has never done and is also transformed into a character that has become quite popular in recent Hollywood movies; The Wise Magical Mystical Negro.  This particular omnipresent character observes people with numerous problems, spouts off notes of obviousness, and guides these characters to greater enlightenment and achievement.  See Will Smith

in ‘The Legend of Bagger Vance’ Laurence Fishburne in ‘The Matrix’, Whoopi Goldberg in ‘Clara’s Heart’ or just pick almost any Morgan Freeman movie.  Here the Magical Negro advises the owner of her super store chain (Timothy Hutton) that he should stop his evil money grubbing ways, advises his assistant (Alicia Witt) that she should finish college since he will never leave his wife for her, empowers the entire hotel staff, and teaches her local congressman (Giancarlo Esposito) on the simple values of those who put him in office. 

Wayne Wangs competent direction treads familiar ground, takes very few chances as there probably isn’t a whole lot of chances to take, wraps everything up all nice tidy and delivers it in an understated, conservative red bow.  This is a slightly amusing harmless films, that with the exception of an oral sex reference and that the Queen uses the word ‘shit’ once, this film barely earns it’s PG-13 rating.  

As I said before, not bad but not good, ‘Last Holiday’ is disposable entertainment at it’s most disposable.