BET+'s "Vera's Holiday Flop" brings chaos and cameos for the holiday season
- The Real Perspectives
- Dec 22, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 6
Reel Perspectives
December 21, 2025
BET+’s latest holiday film swings big on friendship and chaos, even when the execution doesn’t quite stick the landing.
Slightly chuckling, Elf-on-the-Shelf Morgan here, reporting on the latest BET+ holiday offering, Vera’s Holiday Flop. And when I say “slightly chuckling,” I don’t mean 'oh wow, that was hilarious.' I mean, more of a 'some things worked, some things very much did not work' type of situation.
Written, directed, and starring Charity Jordan, the film follows Vera—a perfectionist armed with a color-coded whiteboard schedule—who plans a Christmas reunion 20 years in the making. The goal? One last holiday hurrah before a potential promotion and relocation to China. The result? A stacked house, a stacked cast, and a story juggling far more plates than it can reasonably keep spinning.
The film premiered on December 18 and opens with Vera navigating a frankly HR-nightmare job that requires her to prove her worth during Christmas week, because nothing says “corporate excellence” like seasonal emotional distress.
Her reunion guest list includes married-and-always-arguing Tori (Terri J. Vaughn) and Kayden (Garry D. Marshall, aka “Mr. Griff”), influencer Kelsie (Chrissy McDaniel) and her waxing-entrepreneur girlfriend Shayla (Ashley Rios), reality-TV hopeful Delvin (Tyler Chronicles), carbon-footprint critic Ajani (Jelani Akil Jones), recently divorced Morgan (Algebra Blessett), and convenient love interest Omar (Amari Cheatom)—all packed into a highly debatable 4,000-square-foot house.
And if that somehow isn’t enough, Scotty ATL pops in as Barry, who is in and out of prison and having the absolute time of his life.
When Kelsie reveals she’s a lesbian, the moment is met with shock—especially from Tori, who exclaims:
“Kesie has been on letter ‘d’ since Sesame Street.”
From there, the group launches into a you-know-you’re-too-grown-for-this game of challenges involving ding-dong ditching, stealing baby Jesus from a nativity scene, stripping naked in the cold, and caroling. Naturally, things escalate when a terribly CGI spider bites Vera in the ass—yes, literally—knocking her unconscious. What follows is a full Weekend at Bernie’s situation as the group scrambles to avoid police discovery.
At one point, a character yells, “What in the last season of Snowfall!”
Television references abound, making it clear the scriptwriter is a fan of Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, and Stranger Things—and maybe stretching that Netflix subscription just a little too thin. The weekend spirals as Tori and Kayden confront fertility struggles, Kelsie and Shayla implode, Morgan wrestles with divorce and her father’s death, and Delvin nearly drinks Kayden’s… baby-making sample. Y’all. I didn’t want to type that either.
Somehow, amid all this, the friends collectively realize that, for their sake and ours, they should maybe see each other more often.
Enter Omar—Vera’s blast from the past—who does everything possible, with clothes and without, to convince her not to leave for Hong Kong. That is, assuming anyone involved remembers where Vera is actually relocating to. Her boss, after all, confuses Chinese greetings with konnichiwa instead of néih hóu, leaving this audience of one unsure whether the job—or the script—knows what continent it’s on.
Everything culminates in a chaotic family dinner where far too much tea is spilled, tensions erupt, and Vera learns she didn’t even get the CFO promotion for the Eastern Division. Worse, she TikTok crash-outs her frustrations, threatens her boss, and promptly loses her job entirely. After a Dawson’s Creek-level dramatic walk-off from the table, Vera ultimately realizes her friends mean well and that—with or without the job—she will “soar.”
Whether the film itself does the same depends on the viewer.
There are solid laughs—“May the Obamas be with you” genuinely lands—but the film is weighed down by stacked cameos, overstuffed storylines, and an ending that feels rushed as Vera heads to China armed with nothing but a suitcase, a Spirit Airlines ticket, and vibes. Despite the hiccups, the film’s strongest moments lie in its friendships, where Vera recognizes those relationships as her “most prized possessions.”
At its core, Vera’s Holiday Flop asks a simple question: What happens when you reunite with people from your past after 20 years, and absolutely nothing goes according to plan? The answer is chaos, comedy, and a whole lot of holiday mess.
🎬 Behind the Scenes: Who Is Charity Jordan? 🎬
While Vera’s Holiday Flop may not fully stick the landing, it’s important to acknowledge the achievement behind it. Charity Jordan didn’t just star in the film—she also wrote and directed it, carving out space for a Black-led holiday story in a genre that doesn’t always make room. Viewers may recognize Jordan from her work in Selma, The Piano Lesson, and The Wonder Years, where she appeared in the acclaimed reboot that reimagined the coming-of-age classic through a Black family’s lens, as well as from various television roles that highlight her comedic timing and grounded screen presence—strengths that clearly inform her vision here, even when the film’s ambition occasionally outpaces its execution.
The film is executive produced by Justin Jerome Jordan, with Chastity Purvis Jordan serving as co-executive producer and Angela Addison as producer, all working toward a modern, ensemble-driven holiday story centered on friendship, love, and personal reinvention. Getting a project like this made—especially one led by a Black woman in multiple creative roles—is no small feat. Even when the execution stumbles, the ambition and visibility matter. Sometimes the flop is just part of the process.
🌲 Reels Perspectives Christmas Movie Rating: 6 out of 10 CGI Spiders 🌲 A generous six for the laughs that do land, the commitment of the cast, and the undeniable ambition behind the project. Points deducted for the CGI spider that absolutely did not need to exist, a plot juggling one too many storylines, and an ending that arrives before everything has fully settled. Messy, earnest, occasionally funny—your mileage may vary.
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