First Sunday

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It's sad the way that people in Hollywood get typecast. Apart from "Boyz n the Hood," "Three Kings," and "Barbershop," has Ice Cube acted in a film that wasn't a disappointment? Though this guy's got talent and on-screen charisma, when you see his name in the credits lately, you almost wince, knowing he's going to be playing the same type of character, and the film is going to be a turkey.

That's exactly what "First Sunday" turns out to be, basted or not.

You'd think with funny co-stars like Tracy Morgan--the SNL guy who was a riot in "30 Rock"--and stand-up comic Katt Williams there's be a lot more laughs than this script from writer-director David E. Talbert provides. In his parody of a choir master, Williams reminds you a little of Arsenio Hall's riotous Reverend Brown from "Coming to America," and it's moments like these when you find yourself wondering why Talbert didn't go more over-the-top with this one. Instead, he weaves "serious" moments into a plotline that, frankly, doesn't deserve and can't support them.

Cube plays a small-time hood named Durrell who seems nice enough, doesn't belong to a gang, but has become the poster child for underachievement. We're told he got high SAT scores, but instead of ending up on a college campus he spends most of his time standing before a judge with his less brainy buddy, LeeJohn (Morgan). Their latest offense lands them a gazillion hours of community service.

But their problems go deeper than those not-exactly-stylin' orange jump suits. The truckload of hot wheelchairs they bought from Jamaican gangstas, hoping to sell them and make a killing, spilled onto the streets. Now the Jamaicans are threatening to kill them if they don't come up with the money for the chairs. It's a premise that would seem to have the potential for comedy, but it only comes off like the opening scene from "Beverly Hills Cop," and nothing funnier. Contrivances abound. As if being in hock to the Jamaicans wasn't enough, we're told that Durrell's ex- (Regina Hall) is going to move to Atlanta and take his son, unless he gives her back child support and the money she needs to keep her hair styling business in town. So we get the obligatory tender moment between Durrell and his son that will supposedly justify anything he does to get the money . . . which is rob a church. And if that doesn't work, take the congregation hostage.

In the cluttered muddle that follows, the only comedic moments come from Morgan and Williams, with Cube playing his usual long-suffering, angry, straight man. But those laughs don't come from the script. They come from watching two comics have fun with their characters. Would that more of them had. Then again, Talbert's script and direction are so low-key that it seems half the characters are playing it straight while half are going for comedy. And nobody can get very far going in two separate directions.

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