FIRST SUNDAY
Starring Ice Cube, Tracy Morgan. Written and directed by David E. Talbert. (PG) 97 min. Opens Jan 11.
A lot goes wonky in this Ice Cube-produced attempt to make an inspirational crowdpleaser but surely the decision to make Tracy Morgan cry is the most perverse. Not even 30 Rock’s ruling nutjob can withstand the onslaught of preachy sentimentality that drains First Sunday of any vitality and spontaneity. Hell, even Ice Cube gets leaky. Has the man behind AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted really come to this? Surely, Eazy-E must be shaking his head as he looks down from heaven.
Ice Cube and Morgan play Durell and LeeJohn, a pair of hard-luck guys in Baltimore who decide the best way to get out of their troubles is to relieve a downtown church of its latest donations. Being numbskulls, they pull the heist on a night when the church is full of staffers, including Chi McBride as the weary pastor, Michael Beach as the slickster deacon and comedian Katt Williams as the effeminate choir director.
Though the sight of the hoods waving guns in the faces of the parish folk is never as amusing as it’s intended to be, Tracy Morgan gets a few moments of Tracy Jordan-calibre lunacy. (“If I go to jail,” he exclaims at one point, “they gonna make me a woman!”) And while Williams queens it up shamelessly, his withering quips are richly appreciated. But writer-director David E. Talbert — a prolific playwright who’s aiming to follow Tyler Perry from the African-American inspirational market into the Hollywood mainstream — has no flair for either the comedic or dramatic elements and his movie soon grows sluggish and aimless. More cowardly is First Sunday’s reluctance to alienate secular viewers — the film somehow ends with religious conversions that leave out any mention of the Almighty. If you’re gonna make Tracy Morgan cry, then you’ve gotta let him speak in tongues, too.