Crackerjack ensemble gives 'First Sunday' a boost
"First Sunday" is a broad, funny populist comedy with a seemingly unsavory subject. It's about two hapless Baltimore criminals -- a kind of Laurel and Hardy of street crime played by angry Ice Cube (Durell) and superflake Tracy Morgan (LeeJohn) -- who try to dig their way out of an awful financial hole by robbing a church.
Of course, this irreverent nocturnal break-in blows up in their faces. And, after the holy moolah mysteriously vanishes from the church safe, Durell and LeeJohn wind up holding the church elders and the choir hostage, while outside the police slowly tumble to what's happening off hours at the House of God.
Now, despite the fact that Cube and Morgan are firing on all cylinders, boosted by an incredible turn by Katt Williams as the fey choirmaster Rickey, this movie seems to have some sympathy-generation problems.
Can you really make audiences laugh at a church burglary? Can you make most of them feel empathy for the two bumbling burglars whose previous escapades include peddling hot wheelchairs?
Durell is shown as a loving daddy desperately trying to raise cash for his ex-wife (Regina Hall) and their son (C.J. Sanders of "Ray"). LeeJohn is a kind of jabbering moonchild, obviously twisted by his experiences in foster homes and with strict church people.
So, it's hard to see how first-time writer-director David E. Talbert can pull off the trick, especially in a movie that obviously wants to inspire some of that old-time religious spirit. Luckily, Talbert is a canny vet of play-writing and TV comedy, and he has a neat sense of comedic-dramatic structure.
More important, he digs the basic principle of most good movie comedy: Go for the laughs, keep the story tight, but turn your comedians loose.
Topped by Cube, Morgan and Williams, "First Sunday" boasts a crackerjack ensemble that can easily supply everything the show needs: from lowdown farcical high jinks to satiric sass to romantic interludes, capped with even a few heartrending moments.
That cast, all having a high old time with Talbert's jokes and their own ad libs, includes Chi McBride as the fatherly Pastor Mitchell (bound and tied but reverent for much of the movie), Malinda Williams as his pop-off daughter (who proves engagingly sexy about coping with air-conditioning malfunctions), Michael Beach as a weasely deacon, Olivia Cole as queenly Momma T, and Loretta Devine as Sister Doris, a real honey pie.
My favorite actor in this bang-up bunch is Keith David as Judge Galloway. David is the dramatic ace whom we recently heard intoning away as the wonderfully James Earl Jones-ish voice of authority narrating Ken Burns' great documentary "The War."
There's a problem with the script; Durell doesn't undergo the kind of obviously transforming experience that overcomes and overwhelms poor featherbrained troublemaker LeeJohn.
Just as with people, you have to judge a movie for what it is. "First Sunday" may stumble from the path at times, like Durell and LeeJohn.
But it can also send up a sublimely goofy hymn of praise, like rockin' Brother Rickey.
"First Sunday"
2½ stars out of four
Opens today
Ice Cube as Durell
Katt Williams as Rickey
Tracy Morgan as LeeJohn
Written and directed by David Talbert. Produced by Talbert, David McIlvain, Tim Story, Ice Cube and Matt Alvarez. A Screen Gems release. Rated PG-13 (language, sexual humor, drug references). Running time: 98 minutes.