'First Sunday' is a confused, unholy mess

By Chris Kaltenbach | Sun Reporter

January 11, 2008

(C) First Sunday is a movie about forgiveness that asks its audience to forgive too much - with regard to both its characters and its makers.

Set in Baltimore, with a few exteriors shot downtown, this uneven comedy plays a robbery and hostage-taking at a church for laughs, even when its supposedly sympathetic main character pulls a gun and seems plenty ready to use it. The movie is so confused about itself that it comes across as toneless, a bunch of characters wandering around in a story no one is controlling. Even as one wants to cut it some slack for good intentions, the film's scattershot assortment of moods, styles and even character-types keeps dragging it down.

Ice Cube, his face locked in a scowl that's unrelenting even for him, is Durell, a smart but hapless ex-con who can't get a break. No one wants to hire a guy with a rap sheet; his ex-wife is demanding $17,000, lest she move to Atlanta with his son; and, perhaps worst of all, his best bud is a shiftless and moronic street hustler named LeeJohn (Tracy Morgan, way overplaying his hand).

Desperate to raise the cash, and unable to find a legit way of doing so, Durell and LeeJohn wander into a church, where they're stunned to find people simply dropping $100 bills into the collection plate. Of course, they realize, the answer to their problem is simple: Rob the church.

This may sound like iffy territory for a comedy, and it is. The casual way in which LeeJohn and Durell (who, we're constantly reminded, is really an upstanding guy) decide to rob from the church is practically offensive; it's certainly unbelievable. Poor Ice Cube, who was effective in such films as The Players Club, Barbershop and xXx: State of the Union, never gets a hold of his character. The problem isn't that he's neither saint nor sinner, it's that he's not real. A subplot in which he's shown as a loving father trying to help his son get better than he ever got sounds good - but it never goes anywhere, save to help us "understand" why he'd stoop to robbing a church. Sorry, but no.

There's supposed to be comedy in the cast of characters who ends up locked inside the church with its would-be robbers. But the only one who generates any laughs is Katt Williams as a fey choir leader who can't believe he's stuck in such a predicament (making him the character with whom most in the audience will relate). He gets almost all of the film's good lines, and makes the most of them. Others in the cast include Chi McBride as the pastor and Olivia Cole as an older churchgoer, who bring to the film more dignity than it deserves, and Regina Hall as Durell's intolerant and nearly intolerable ex.

With his first big-screen release, writer-director David E. Talbert, a Morgan State University grad who has spent more than a decade writing for the stage, tries to tap into the vein of gospel-influenced films that have been such a success for filmmakers like Tyler Perry. He and a growing number of imitators use church values and ringing gospel music as a backdrop for their odes to family, responsibility and self-respect.

But Talbert miscalculates by including only one gospel number in the film, a stirring rendition of "The Presence of the Lord Is Here," during which the film's energy level - not to mention the audience's - rises noticeably. Sadly, all that really does is make the rest of the film seem even more disjointed and lackluster.

>>> First Sunday (Screen Gems) Starring Ice Cube, Tracy Morgan, Chi McBride. Written and directed by David E. Talbert. Rated PG-13. Time 96 minutes.

chris.kaltenbach@baltsun.com