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One mans quest to do right by his son leads to an accident church robbing…

Upon losing his pawnshop job, Durrell Johnson (Ice Cube) reluctantly agrees to help his hapless friend LeeJohn (Tracy Morgan) on a job turning around, err, ‘dressed up’ wheel chairs for a group of Jamaican thieves. Of course their easy money making plan goes awry, with their cargo of chrome and leather wheel chairs spilling across a pile of pedestrians and police cars. Upon going to court for their offences, the two are awarded 5,000 hours of community service. (That’s 625 eight-hour workdays. I checked.)

  The Jamaican group is not very pleased, and really wants their money back.  To make matters worse, Durrell’s sons mother Omunique is planning on moving back home near her mother, in order to make a better life for their son. Unless he comes up with a substantial amount of money, Durrell will be left alone. In order for LeeJohn to pay the money he owes to the Jamaicans, and to help his friend keep his son, he devises a plan to rob the local church tithe fund. It’s only convenient the church is… supposed to have… the exact dollar amount both men need to get their lives back in order.

  Durrell (Cube) reluctantly agrees, seeing no other route that has a greater, well, payoff. What the two hapless crooks thought would be an easy in-out grab, of course, is not in the least. First, they find all the main church people are their- pastor, family, and etc- for a meeting. Secondly, someone else has already taken the church’s funds that Durrell and LeeJohn had their eyes on. What ensues is an accidental church hostage situation as everyone tries to find who amongst them is the truest criminal.

  First Sunday has surprising bits of emotion thrown in, in such a convincing way as to actually be a surprise. Ice Cube does not wonder too far from his usual roles in films, pulling off the working stiff with a big heart, who just never gets the right breaks. Tracy Morgan plays the hapless sidekick, forever getting into trouble, but still remains a believable character. However I do feel that a lot of the roles were just typical stereotypes. It was an enjoyable movie, but nothing I would recommend someone going out of their way to see.

The special features for this DVD seem to fall into step with other films that enter the category of ‘ok so I guess we have to dig up some extras for the DVD.’ The features were enjoyable, if not significantly impressive. The director/writer commentary was all right, but I could not tolerate it myself. There are 14 deleted scenes, all with optional commentary. I enjoyed the gag real especially, as I do with most movies, while the outtakes seemed to get old and stretched out rather quickly. Writer/director David E. Talbert shows his emotional side in the added camera wraps speech. These features were nice, but seemed ordinary. There was nothing special in my opinion.

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