Trailer: Nothing Like The Holidays–Santa’s Bringing Middle Class Latinos For Christmas!

Forget having a black man in the White House. We never thought we’d live to see a Latino Christmas movie. Seriously, brown folks and sleigh bells don’t exactly coincide in the collective American imagination. But, as you know, most Latinos are of the Christian persuasion and have been known to gather around a Christmas tree or two. (Albeit with tamales or coquito.) And now that we live in a post-racial society, someone has seen fit to green light and actually release Nothing Like The Holidays–the story of the Rodriguezes, a Puerto Rican family from Chicago, who gather in their parents home to engage in all the love and dysfunction that comes with such occasions.

Nothing Like The Holidays stars John Leguizamo as the stockbroker eldest Rodriguez child and Debra Messing as his Jewish, high-powered executive wife who won’t have a baby. Alfred Molina (who doesn’t speak much in the trailer–maybe because he’s English?) and Elizabeth Peña play the parents. Which is weird since Peña is only three years older than Leguizamo. Vanessa Ferlito, (who has acted in a lot of cop shows we never watch and Grindhouse), plays the middle child who is failing at her dream of becoming an actress and Freddy Rodriguez (Six Feet Under) plays their youngest who recently returned from serving in Iraq. We’ve been waiting a long effing time to see our family on the big screen. That is, one who is Latino, educated and middle-class, but who still say things like, “that’s white people shit!.” (A line delivered by older cousin Johnny played by Luis Guzman.) It looks like the wait may have been worth it. The New York Times listed Freddy Rodriguez’s performance amongst their “Five Attention-Getting Turns.” Nothing Like The Holidays (it doesn’t even have a ridiculous mifamilia-caliente-papichulo title) was directed by Alfredo de Villa (Washington Heights.) The trailer is below.