Martin Lawrence and Mo'Nique play brother and sister in this family humiliation comedy.
(David Lee/Universal Studios via AP)
Movie Review
"Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins" is a comedy that wants us to believe that James Earl Jones and Margaret Avery could be the proudish parents of Martin Lawrence, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Mo'Nique. You can't ask comedy to pull that off when it's science-fiction's job. Then again, realism gets beat up something awful in this movie. So do we. This is one of those your-roots-are-showing family circuses where just about everybody seems like a clown.
Lawrence plays RJ Stevens, a sub-Dr. Phil talk-show host and best-selling author ("The Team of Me") who takes his snotty vegan fiancee, Bianca (Joy Bryant), to Georgia for his parents' 50th wedding anniversary. He hasn't been home in nine years, which is plenty of time for the humiliations he's avoided to pile up.
Before RJ even gets out of his first-class seat, his white suit is covered in beet juice (which airline stocks that?). He's forced to wear a pair of madras patch pants, then an entire Cross Colors faux-African outfit, which is perfect for a movie that feels like it came out 18 years ago. Both getups are only slightly more obnoxious than the movie itself.
Eventually, RJ's successful car salesman cousin, Clyde (Cedric the Entertainer), shows up. They resume their boyhood rivalry over Lucinda (Nicole Ari Parker), the down-to-earth beauty who's still mysteriously available to them. The writer and director Malcolm D. Lee ("Roll Bounce") has no apparent interest in developing this movie into even a moderately plausible, tonally consistent entertainment. He'd rather show us two dogs having sex (which goes on long enough to be almost funny) or whip up senseless horseplay that ends in the destruction of Mamma Jenkins's kitchen. Oh, and look out for that stream of skunk spray that hits RJ's face. (Yup, it's that type of movie, too.)
Lee hasn't grown much as a filmmaker or a storyteller over the years. But, my, can he waste a very good cast. Here everybody stands around while one actor does his or her thing (usually it's Mike Epps as a lewd cousin). Playing the eldest Jenkins's child, Duncan is actually as funny as Epps and Mo'Nique. He ought to get himself a real comedy, quick.
"Roscoe Jenkins" never tries for passable adult laughs. Why is Mo'Nique scrubbing her feet at the kitchen table? Why does Margaret Avery have to be socked in the head during the long, long softball-game sequence? Why doesn't Mamma Jenkins have any control over her house? And that skunk . . . for real?
Sadly, the movie's biggest burst of inspiration involves Lawrence and Mo'Nique battering each other a la Eddie Murphy and Della Reese in "Harlem Nights." None of Lee's attempts at satire work, either. Bryant is supposed to be playing a cutthroat "Survivor" contestant and some joke on Paris Hilton (she's usually a pleasure to watch; not here).
It's as if Lee's taken the likable bawdy gags of his 2002 blaxploitation romp "Undercover Brother" and the ensemble charm of his 1999 romantic comedy "The Best Man" and dropped them on the Jenkins house like a cartoon anvil. The movie hurts.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.
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