Robbin' Hoods

What really hurts about "First Sunday" - writer-director David E. Talbert's frenetically unfunny comedy - is that there's a promising premise buried in its frighteningly lengthy 98 minutes. The story, such as it is, revolves around two Baltimore men who, in an hour of desperation, decide to rob the neighborhood church of its renovation fund. In "Sunday" those men are Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan. And their hour of desperation has something to do with a misplaced batch of stolen, pimped-out wheelchairs. If that sentence doesn't have you chuckling, nothing in this woefully amateurish comedy will.

Ice Cube has now firmly left the old days behind him. Years of choices like "Are We There Yet?", "Torque" and "xXx: State of the Union" has left the memory of "Three Kings" and "Boyz n the Hood" (still his finest hour) feeling like centuries past. Even 1995's affable stoner comedy "Friday" is comparably brilliant next to "Sunday". It's not that the one-time rapper isn't a charismatic screen presence (he is), it's just that he doesn't appear to be trying anymore. He and Mr. Morgan (who amps his "30 Rock" shtick up to a grating degree) don't even seem to enjoy their moments of would-be buddy time.

The rest of the cast - particularly Katt Williams as a (shocking!) effeminate choir director who's essentially a one-liner machine - surrender themselves to stereotype. The venerable preacher (Chi McBride, on autopilot), the clueless cop (Nicholas Turturro, miles from "NYPD Blue"), the "baby momma" (Regina Hall, doing what she can), the wise old black woman (Olivia Cole). They're all here. And none are drawn with more than a brushstroke in Mr. Talbert's flat, throwaway script.

Only Ice Cube's Durell is given the potential for depth. He's setup to be a smart guy (the script takes pains to mention he scored highest in his class on his SATs) driven by a desire to keep his son in town (it seems approximately $17,000 will do it). During one of their morning walks to the school bus, his son looks at him and says "I want to be just like you". Unfortunately, we have no idea what the boy is seeing. Everything that preceded these scenes has shown Durell to be an easily-irritated schlub with impossibly poor decision-making skills and a mentally-deficient hanger-on of a friend. Likewise, the film's eventual climax - in which characters "grow" and "learn" - holds no heft (one character actually says, "I've grown, I'm a changed man". Uh huh.). Like Durell, Ice Cube is a smart guy who should be picking better scripts.

It's a shame too because there was potential here. The original kernel of an idea about two men driven to rob a church could have been made into an interesting story about desperation and forgiveness. But that would have required care and subtlety. In that sense, "First Sunday" doesn't have a prayer.