Thanks to
the success of films like Diary Of A Mad Black Woman and Why Did I Get Married?, we now live in a post-Tyler Perry
world where filmmakers no longer have to choose between lowbrow zaniness and
godliness, or favor Comic View raunchiness over Christian righteousness. In First Sunday, the conflict and reconciliation of
the secular and the godly provides the overriding arc: It's a morality tale
about sinners learning to love saints, and saints learning to forgive sinners.
Like Perry, First Sunday writer-director David E. Talbert developed a grassroots,
populist sensibility by churning out enormously successful, Jesus-friendly
plays that were subsequently taped for the direct-to-DVD market. What his approach lacks in subtlety and
nuance, it makes up for in crowd-pleasing brashness, at least from a commercial
perspective.
Ice Cube
lends his trademark scowl to the thankless role of a big-hearted underachiever
on the verge of losing his son. When free-spirited best pal Tracy Morgan gets
into trouble with gangsters following a stolen-wheelchair transport scheme gone
awry, the desperate twosome set out to rob a church, but end up holding the
faithful hostage instead. While Morgan and Cube search for the church's stash,
the conflict between the pastor's headstrong daughter and an upwardly mobile deacon eager to move his flock to greener, more suburban pastures rises to a
boil.
Red-hot
stand-up comic Katt Williams co-stars as the church's preening rooster of a
choir director. With Morgan, he does his best to keep things lively, but the
film has a hard time sustaining comic momentum, especially once the looming
specter of the Lord comes into play, though Talbert smartly exploits the
little-boy vulnerability behind Morgan's anarchic zaniness. A corny yet
unexpectedly moving scene in which Morgan is moved to tears by Loretta
Devine's simple kindness helps make the film's shift into inspirational
drama far more palatable than it really has any right to be. But while Talbert
has clearly given his leads free rein to improvise his script, he doesn't give
them much to work with. First Sunday pits the street against the church,
but somehow, affable mediocrity wins the day.