Movies/TV
'First' is Last in Laughs
By Esther Iverem--SeeingBlack.com Editor and Film Critic
Jan 10, 2008, 18:40

Times are tough, so tough in fact that few of us can afford to spend too much time around people who are stupid and/or a drain on our game.

Perhaps matching prison jumpsuits provide a hint about one man's choice in friends.

Yet in “First Sunday,” the latest comedy starring Ice Cube, a Baltimore man named Durell lets his friend LeeJohn separate him from gainful employment and talk him into robbing a church.

Despite moments that do elicit some laughs, it is Durell’s association with LeeJohn—obviously one of those dysfunctional friendships from kindergarten—that add many more moments that are frustrating and teeth-grinding.

Since “First Sunday” seems to pick up thematically from where the “Friday” movies left off, it’s worth noting that Ice Cube (as Durell in this movie) has had a series of comedian sidekicks, with diminishing returns. Chris Tucker, then Mike Epps and now Tracy Morgan have each provided the energy of a dim bulb, weed-head or grown-up crack baby to the plot, providing a counterweight to Cube’s serious, semi-thug demeanor. (He didn’t have to use his A.K., so it was a good day.) All the while, of course, the underlying joke is that the more serious Cube can’t be that serious if he spends so much time socializing with the mentally challenged.

Maybe this is the last time that Ice Cube, who turns 40 next year, will act like a juvenile delinquent.

This urban-styled “Beavis and Butthead” routine was a lot more entertaining the first time around, when we could imagine that Cube and buddy were high school dropouts or, at the most, wasting their late teens or early twenties nodding off on the front porch. But 13 years later, with Ice Cube turning 40 in real life next year, it’s a lot less funny—to me anyway. As the airhead city prosecutor says in this film, Durell and LeeJohn “are grown-ass men.” The serious real-life corollary, of so many churches in our neighborhoods being victimized by thieves, is not lost either. The plot has to work some serious magic to make holding up old ladies into laughs.

Most of the magic comes from the comedic actor Katt Williams, who does play a stereotypical gay choir director but does it with fresh jokes and attitude. And, of course, no church comedy would be complete without an amusing cameo from the comedian Ricky Smiley, who has turned his outrageous church comedy into a franchise. The plot and script of “First Sunday could have been helped by more Rickey Smiley and fewer stale jokes.

This film, written and directed by David E. Talbert, also has a certain quality that I can only describe as bi-polar. Along with Cube’s more serious demeanor comes a real-world plot about his relationship to his son and the lengths Durell is willing to go to in order to prevent his son’s mother from moving to another city, with her son in tow. While I appreciate the family-friendly nature of this storyline, and how it connects with ideas about spirituality and personal transformation, it was difficult to reconcile Durrell’s role as a concerned dad with his crackish decisions and associations with LeeJohn, (who, by the way, has two names because his mother didn’t know which of her two boyfriends was his father. That is the level we’re dealing on here…)


This review also appeared on Tom Joyner's BlackAmericaWeb.com.

You can order Esther Iverem's critically praised We Gotta Have It: Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006 (Thunder’s Mouth Press, April 2007)at Amazon.com or purchase at your favorite bookstore. It makes a wonderful gift! Thanks!

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