Review: First Sunday

February 26, 2008 · Print This Article

Review First Sunday

Arlingotn (CMR) - Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan team up in this comedy about a heist that has gone really bad. Ice Cube’s “Friday”series and Tracy Morgan of “30 Rock” have paired up for this heartwarming comedy.

As the title suggests, they have aimed to rob their local church but in the end, they got more than what they have bargained for. Featuring different characters that are also members of the church, the movie also aims to show how faith has woven together people with different reasons. Their dedication to the church has given them enough motivation to support it with varying reasons that are revealed from start to finish.

The plot sounds simple and predictable. Feel good movies are a little predictable while giving us message of hope, love and other virtues that we should be reminded of in the film.

This time, “First Sunday” also tried to tell us something. But the message was actually spoken to Durell - Ice Cube’s character. That actually sums up the whole movie – everything else seems to just fall down drastically. Blame this thing to the writers of the movie as they have equipped their characters with limited words which at the end, doesn’t give much credit on how deep each character is.

The comedy part of the movie is also sub-par. I have to admit there are chuckles in the movie especially from Tracy Morgan. But the chuckles I had are also the same when he actually performed in “30 Rock”. Ice Cube, on the other hand has a good job letting other characters take over to make the movie more interesting.

Unfortunately, the main characters are the sole focus of the movie so there were no chances for the other characters to be really funny, except of course from Tracy Morgan.

In the end, the movie gives us a remarkably simple story written in a sub-par manner. Other characters where robbed of the spotlight.
They should have given more parts to the characters that support the story to make it even more entertaining. But the movie has decided to rely their laughs to the one-two punch of Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan. Although they could give the laughs that you need, they literally have failed to get the help from other characters.

There’s no telling who to blame in this movie. We could point out to almost anyone related to this movie but the fact is, it didn’t lived up to the expectations of movie goers.

CMR gives First Sunday a rating of 2/5.