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" Welcome
Home Roscoe Jenkins
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Posted on
11:00 p.m. PST February, 2008 |
In this broad comedy of familial bad manners, Martin
Lawrence stars as a Jerry Springer-ish talk-show host with a
Survivor-winning fiancée (Joy Bryant) and a young son (Damani
Roberts)
 he somewhat neglects. All three decamp to his
parents' house in rural Georgia on the occasion of the
oldsters' 50th wedding anniversary. There, our
celebrity-life-embracing hero is cut down to size by the
relations he left behind, including his abrasive sister,
Betty (Mo'Nique), and big brother Otis (very big brother,
actually, given that he's played by Michael Clarke Duncan).
In short, if you thought National Lampoon's Vacation films
were at least okay, then Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins is a
decent enough way to spend two hours.
However, as was the case with the Vacation movies, the cast
is never really made to break a metaphorical sweat. Lawrence
is a genuinely funny actor and spiky stand-up, but here he
is often merely required to fall over — or be sprayed by a
skunk (a comedy trope that, humor scientists now agree,
stopped being funny some time during the second Reagan
administration). Mo'Nique is similarly given little
opportunity to show off her indisputable comedic chops,
though her freewheeling monologue during the closing credits
hints at what might have been. The result may not smell
nearly as bad as a skunk, but it does give off the distinct
whiff of underachievement.
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Review By
Clark Collis
Posted Feb 06, 2008
link to review |
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