Returning to Huntsville, Alabama—a town that once held back their opportunities but now glistens as a modern, technology-based city—the Boxer family and its extended members discover in the memory of a loved one what binds them together.

As the Boxer family comes together for the first time in many years, revelations of Carmel's painful past begin to force each person to address their pent-up emotions and true feelings for one another.

The story chronicles the lives and loves of this African-American family as its members are forced to come to terms with a tumultuous past marked by an unrequited interracial affair.

The site's critics consensus states "Though earnestly directed, Constellation lacks dramatic fireworks and eventually falls into TV-movie sentimentality.

"[4] However, the Los Angeles Times said in its review that the film was "highly entertaining and emotional," and that "Walker-Pearlman is adept at revealing the effect these people and others have on each other, especially on Helms, played with depth and restraint by Williams.