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Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins [2008]
from Universal Pictures UK
starring Martin Lawrence, Joy Bryant, Mike Epps, Margaret Avery, Cedric The Entertainer
directed by Malcolm D. Lee

Features:

• PAL

Editorial Review:

While its story might sound terribly interesting, Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins is largely a vehicle for gross-out sight gags and grotesque performances by performers who, in many cases, don't need to do such things. Martin Lawrence stars as R.J. Stevens, a successful, Jerry Springer-like, television talk show host who sets aside his perfect life with a sweet son (Damani Roberts) and celebrity girlfriend (Joy Bryant) to attend his parents' golden wedding anniversary back home in Georgia. From the moment he arrives, all the reasons R.J. left to reinvent himself on the West Coast become clear. His siblings and cousins (Mike Epps, Mo'Nique, Michael Clarke Duncan, Cedric the Entertainer) quickly put him in his place, reminding him that his name is actually Roscoe Jenkins. His sweet mother (Margaret Avery) watches impassively while R.J.'s dad (James Earl Jones) strikes one disapproving note after another.

R.J. would be content to wait out the anniversary events and go home, but the arrival of a woman (Nicole Ari Parker) he loved but couldn't keep during his adolescence changes everything, bringing out the competitive survivor within. Written and directed by Malcolm D. Lee (Undercover Brother), Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins promises rich comedy and dramatic flavourings, as well as a bunch of delightful actors doing what only they can do best. But Lee subverts the project for cheap and easy laughs, using his best material to do little else than bridge scenes of bad slapstick, bestial perversity, clownish sex and irritating, motormouth rants from the likes of Mo'Nique and Epps. This a hard movie to sit through at 114 minutes, one of those what-were-they-thinking-when-they-made-this films. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

• 3.5--Going home is not always a vacation....,
  "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins," one of the better recent efforts from the funny wing of Black Hollywood. (It is certainly better than "First Sunday.") The film is written and directed by Malcolm D. Lee, who directed but did not write the hilarious 2002 film "Undercover Brother." Lee definitely has some jokes in this one--especially involving canine love--but it seems likely that the film's comedic quartet offered some choice jokes to the script and fed off of each other, upping the comedic ante as they went... more info

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