By Rick Grant
D Rated PG-13 96 min
Ice Cube has carved out a dynasty for himself by making cheap films that enforce negative African-American ghetto stereotypes. In this crappola, Cube played a leading role and produced the project. Nonetheless, Cube knows what ordinary blacks want in their comedies. His formula always includes the church, which is an epicenter of black culture, complemented by black character cliches, including the street thugs, the church lady, the nutty choir director and the sweet elderly grandmother.
In this low rent shoot, Cube played Durell and Tracy Morgan (30 Rock) portrayed LeeJohn–buddies who commit petty street crimes to get by. A heist caper is conjured up by the two goofballs when they hear that the church has raised over $100 grand for a rebuilding project. As motivation, Durell and LeeJohn find out they owe some Jamaican hustlers $17 grand for stolen custom wheel chairs. Yes, the church rebuilding fund seems like easy money.
Of course, everything goes wrong that could go wrong, and the two hapless burglars end up taking the minister and the choir hostage. Amid constant and annoying bickering, the two dunderheads find out that someone else got to the money before them. Now, Durell, who is pissed off that his plan went south, threatens the hostages with bodily harm if they don’t scarf-up the dough. Morgan resorts to his tried-and-true shtick to get laughs, and Cube just snorts-out his lines like he does in every role.
Director/writer David E. Talbert orchestrates the scenes effectively from his own script, which is loaded with hackneyed dialogue. The premise that certain members of the hostage contingent see that Durell is really a decent man wears thin when he acts like a trigger happy killer. The mid-section of this film is irritating and long, and nothing really happens.
The church pastor (Chi McBride), who spends the entire movie tied to a chair, brought some dignity to his role. His daughter (Malinda Williams) had the hots for Durell and comic Katt Williams portrayed the nervous choir director. Michael Beach, who like most of the cast is slumming in this film, plays the role of the church embezzler. Even though the formula has been done to death, audience members in the theater when I viewed the film seemed to really enjoy it. This substantiates my case that Ice Cube has his finger on the pulse of the mainstream black consciousness.
To me, the movie’s running time of 96 minutes seemed like an eternity as the film plodded on with more of the same unfunny setups. To be fair, I noticed that some of the references went right past me, but the audience immediately laughed. Even factoring in my ignorance of some of the references, the film still didn’t measure up to quality standards of writing and filmmaking.
Only when the black film audiences get tired of this lame crap will the standards change. Meanwhile, Ice Cube and his ilk will continue to build up their influence and clout in the business because their films always make money. The credo is–if you make large amounts of money for yourself and other high rollers in the biz, you rise to greatness. No one cares if you haven’t got talent.
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