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In Holiday Heart (2000), Robert Townsend’s superficially heartwarming TV movie, Ving Rhames plays against type as the title character: a veteran Chicago drag queen mourning the recent loss of his long-term boyfriend. He’s trying not to crack; prospects of a Parisian vacation help push him forward. (He and his partner planned one before his passing; going now, in a way, feels like a final tribute.) But that’s put on hold when, one night, while standing with a work buddy outside the club where he performs, Holiday notices a few yards away a woman named Wanda (Alfre Woodard) getting hassled by a man over drugs. Holiday intervenes, and, before he can seriously consider the ramifications, is taking in Wanda and her young daughter, Niki (Jesika Reynolds), for at least a month. 

Holiday’s presence in their lives proves immediately positive. He supports Wanda, who has writerly ambitions (she envisions her poetry published in Essence’s back pages), through a drug detox. And he becomes a de-facto father figure to precocious Niki, who, like her mother, has a burgeoning writing talent. But only about a half-hour into this jarringly paced movie, hurtful betrayal intercedes. Wanda takes up with Silas (Mykelti Williamson), a virulently homophobic and misogynistic drug dealer that forbids both his new girlfriend and Niki from maintaining relationships with Holiday. This doesn’t last long either, though: Wanda relapses, and promptly disappears (as does Silas, though not alongside her), leaving Niki under Holiday’s indefinite care. 

Holiday Heart positions its title character as an elementally angelic figure forgiving to the point of unbelievability. No matter how much he’s mistreated — he’ll even welcome the slur-happy Silas into his life if Silas needs or wants something badly enough — Holiday will always be there when you need him. After a while the saintliness with which he’s depicted starts belittling his humanity; it’s this thick-, broad-stroked movie’s primary problem. Though Rhames’ performance is warm and frequently poignant, his characteristically solid work is curtailed by a movie more interested in rendering him one-dimensionally good and around mostly to soothe others, minimally concerned with examining his interior life beyond the grief he’s working through and his kindness. We rarely explore Holiday’s life when it doesn’t involve Niki and Wanda. And when we do — like when he’s performing at a church service (he’s a devoted Christian) or lip-syncing at the drag club, to enthusiastic standing ovations — the movie doesn’t invest much in his relationships with the people at these personal sanctuaries. Nor does it delve much into his relationships with Christianity or drag themselves. They’re a part of him just because they are. 

Woodard, who gives additional, basically unwritten dimension to a character the screenplay is resolutely unforgiving toward, is also sabotaged by the film’s rather conservative moralizing around drug addiction. The placement of the latter in the meant-to-be-bittersweet — but unbecomingly heavier on the sweet — finale may trigger nausea. Holiday Heart aspires to feel-goodery, but all it does is make you feel bad.