By Fred Topel | Image property of Universal Pictures.
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins
I appreciate that I'm not the target audience for Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins. The recruited audience of African-Americans sure did love every thing about the film, but I still can't recommend it for its intended. It is so repulsive on every level, they should be ashamed of endorsing it.
Review: Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins
It's Meet the Parents without the heart or the wit. Any scene of emotion feels totally constructed. Of course, it's always constructed but when it's constructed well, they at least achieve the illusion of sincerity. When it reaches its preachy messages, the issues they deal with are good enough. It's just so insincere, or maybe it thinks its sincere and just doesn’t know any better.
I frankly don't find unsupportive, antagonistic losers funny. I believe it's real. I just choose not to associate with such negative people, blood or not. You should abandon a family that abuses you like that. My family knows this. That's why they're on good behavior.
Most of this probably would ride the fine line of mediocrity. What sets it over the edge is a single character. I don't want to name names because this actor was probably instructed to overdo it. It's just such a cartoon character it pulls you out of the generic dysfunctional family comedy. You could tolerate the charming BS artist, the screaming loudmouth, the ditzy matron and all.
You could do the basic set up, the introductory video to quickly establish all the characters, the standard typecasts and everything else the same as everything else as long as the jokes are funny. They're just not. Making faces during aggressive sex isn't funny. Look, he's wearing crazy pants! Isn't that hilarious? And there's a quirky dog too!
Seriously, do you have to laugh at rib jokes? Do you really? All right, if that's what you want, don't worry. Hollywood will keep making these movies as long as you continue to support them.
Noisy food sounds are a pet peeve of mine in real life so I certainly don't want to hear them in 5.1 digital surround. Are Survivor references still timely? I ask in all sincerity, because I never watched the show, so it would have felt like a reach to me in its heyday, but how about now?
The film actually calms down about halfway through once it establishes all the kookiness. Except that one character still just makes too big a spectacle, making it impossible to even appreciate all the mediocrity.
Add to Heffee!
