A family of a mother, 2 daughters, and a son, are excited about their tradition of pulling out a Christmas riddle from their special Holiday stocking. Whoever solves it first gets to pick out the charity the family as a whole will participate in. 5 stockings, 5 charities. Even though they have their differences, working together for others at Christmas always brought them together. Thirty or so years later, the brother has died and is about to enter heaven. But first, he is allowed to try to correct his biggest regret, the estrangement of his sisters who have grown apart over the years. In fact, because of long nursed grievances and being too busy with their separate businesses, they are actively hostile and don't speak. Robert has 12 days (the boss has a thing for the number 12) to bring them back together. He is allowed to come back to earth to fix matters and decides to get them to participate in their old Christmas tradition. But nothing doing. Dani is too busy with being the owner of the biggest black-owned marketing firm in Chicago and Marlow is too busy trying to make her bakery a success. Charity work is not even a stray pen mark on the to-do list. That is until Dani is on the verge of losing a big business opportunity due to no community giving or participation, and Marlow realizes that her daughter Gia is becoming a mercenary self-involved little brat. They both agree to participate in the holiday tradition, led by the executor of the dead Robert's will, RJ Angel, who is really dead brother Robert in disguise.
The journey to the sisters becoming family again, Gia becoming a good kid, Marlow's marriage getting a kick in the pants, and a little romance entering all three ladies' lives, is very entertaining. It is well-paced, and full of humor, tender moments, and angst. The road to reconciliation is not always smooth, and of course, we have the climatic drama with about a half hour to go in the movie to get over, but all their lives are on the right path at the end. There is a shocker at the end involving CEO Dani that I didn't see coming, and even dead Robert has a personal revelation that needs some tending to. Penned by prolific black scriptwriter and sometime novelist Cass Sigers-Beedles and directed by Tyler Perry's first assistant director, Roger M. Bobb, this movie was in the best of hands and it showed on screen. I had never heard of any of the female actors but they were all fantastic, particularly Tamala Jones as Marlow.
