First Sunday

by Ken Lowery

Two thugs, a gun, a church: A recipe for a tired comedy.

---

So what do you do if you need a lot of money very soon and no one will hire you because of your criminal record? How about when your only help is a friend so dense he may actually be functionally retarded? Maybe you’re out of ideas until you stumble into a ghetto church on first Sunday, a church in the midst of a successful capital campaign. And maybe the idea lands in your lap, as if by Divine Providence: Rob the church.

Maybe not the most brilliant idea, but Durell (Ice Cube) and LeeJohn (Tracy Morgan) are all out of ides or never had a good one to begin with, respectively. Durell needs to come up with some cash to pay his ex’s bills, or she’s going to take his son and move out of state, where Durell can’t follow. LeeJohn owes money to shady Jamaicans for an ill-advised foray into selling hot wheelchairs. Durell’s ex’s name, in case you’re curious, is Omunique (pronounced “I’m unique”), a joke way funnier than it has any right to be.

So First Sunday has its ticking clock (get the money in a week or I’ll move your son away/break your kneecaps), and we have our reason for two good-but-desperate men to be holding church staff hostage the night of first Sunday. The catch is that all that cash the church has been collecting went missing before Durell and LeeJohn broke in, and tensions between the pastor (Chi McBride), the deacon (Michael Beach), and the pastor’s daughter Tianna (Malinda Williams) rise. The deacon wants to move the congregation to a more suitable (read: less ghetto) location, Tianna won’t hear any of it, and the pastor can’t seem to find any consensus. Throw in a few noble members of the congregation and a sassy choir director (played by Katt Williams, forever beloved by me for lending his voice talent to A Pimp Named Slickback in the Boondocks TV show) and you have the basic idea.

And First Sunday isn’t actually terrible, all things considered. It’s dopey but harmless and possessing a few moments of actual soul, not unlike LeeJohn himself. The film is written and directed with a theatrical sensibility and sitcom ambitions by David E. Talbert, known for his inspirational plays. I would tell you more, but information is scarce, and the Wiki entry on Talbert can be summarized as “he is so completely awesome.” Well, maybe not so much.

But maybe I’m being too unkind to Mr. Talbert. He means no harm, and his movie has sweet, half-buried messages like “fathers should be role models in word and deed,” “everyone deserves some mercy” and “help, rather than flee from, troubled communities.” The earnestness with which those messages are delivered doesn’t leave a lot of room for the raucous laughter you might be looking for. Or at least I was looking for.

Ice Cube is a talented actor and can sell the combination of world-weariness and vulnerability as well as anyone, but his speeches are – well, they’re speeches. Little islands of monologue with heartfelt sentiments for which the phrase “on the nose” is not strong enough. Tracy Morgan, recently so brilliant as a lynch pin on 30 Rock, just mugs and plays stupid, summoning jokes again and again to diminishing returns. Regina Hall, as Omunique, gives indication that there might be a talented dramatic actress lurking behind the shtick, but here isn’t the place to find out. The rest service the plot as the script calls for it, with the choir director providing the one-liners as the hostage situation grows increasingly more serious and LeeJohn stops making with the funny.

Really, this is the kind of movie I most dread reviewing. There’s nothing wrong here that can’t be chalked up to a failure in vision. Or perhaps just a failure to recognize that one can aim higher. The comedy works when it’s not forced, which is more than half the time, and the deeper messages resonate when the characters are allowed to confront the difficulties of them. But the packaging – the way these nuggets of good filmmaking are presented – is too slight, too shallow, to recommend. Too bad.