First Sunday (2008)

I figured we might as well start with a bang... a film I saw a couple of weeks ago...

FIRST SUNDAY (2008).
Directed by David E. Talbert. Written by David E. Talbert. Starring Ice Cube, Katt Williams, Tracy Morgan, Loretta Devine, Regina Hall, Keith David, Chi McBride, and Malinda Williams.

Plot: two low-life best friends, one a petty criminal and the other a struggling father, must find thousands of dollars to escape their fates and choose to rob a church, where they will inevitably learn from their mistakes and become better people.

Alright, people, let's get this straight: we're late in the first decade of the 21st century. Films have been around for over 100 years, and American comedies have become the world-wide go-to standards of excellence (or respectability, at least) since the 1940s, be it in TV sitcoms or in film.

The loser-finds-faith-and-turns-into-a-winner schtick is getting old fast, and every film that continues trying to tell that same old story over the course of two hours is going to bore the audience to tears. Or sleep. And when you have top-notch comedic talent like Ice Cube, Katt Williams and Tracy Morgan in your cast, that is a crime that just shouldn't be allowed to happen.

Writer/director David E. Talbert should have taken a cue from the best comedies of the past decade (Zoolander, Old School) and gotten rid of the whole plot in the first 10 or 15 minutes of the film and let the comics handle the rest; instead, Williams is relegated to crap one-liners once every 10 minutes, Cube plays it straight and Morgan is nothing more than a bumbling sidekick - none were given enough direction to make the film reach laugh-out-loud funniness, nor were they given dialogue to help them over-ride the story lines to bring it to Funnyland.

In the end, we're left with a below-average feel-good movie that could/should have been one of the funniest films of the year.

2.5/5