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Heavy hand topples 'Kingdom'
The forced laugh, the cliched character: Hitting the audience over the head too often keeps this movie from the artistry it could have achieved.
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 12, 2001
[Photo: Fox Searchlight]
Whoopi Goldberg, left, plays a widow relieved by her irritating husband’s death, and Cedric the Entertainer is a minister with a speech impediment and a high threshold for foolishness in Kingdom Come.
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Funerals can bring out the worst in families, especially in the movies. A corpse in a coffin brings all sorts of skeletons out of the closet, from silly to sentimental, with a lot of bickering in-between.
Kingdom Come rattles those bones louder than necessary, with too many forced scenes of wacky behavior and true confessions ever to feel like reality. Doug McHenry's film is certainly lively, with a few moments -- mostly involving actor/rapper LL Cool J -- approaching genuine dramatic art.
But the movie is too eagerly madcap, racing to jokes that seldom match the momentum delivering them. There's a better, more moving story to be found among these colorful characters who share and give each other grief. It sneaks into Kingdom Come, startling a viewer with hints of how good McHenry's film could have been.
LL Cool J is an underrated actor with a plum role as Ray Bud Slocomb, eldest son of the deceased, a cantankerous gent whose demise relieves his put-upon widow, Raynelle (Whoopi Goldberg). The bad/good news spreads to the clan, pulling an odd assortment of underachievers, overdressed vamps and assorted eccentrics to the tiny town of Lula.
Ray Bud is the simmering center of this stewpot, a mechanic with hard feelings toward his neglectful father and alcoholism in remission. Mr. J handles those melodramatic moments with understated authority, especially during a heart-to-heart talk with his wayward brother Junior (Anthony Anderson) and the touchy-feely finale that McHenry makes a bit too tidy.
LL Cool J keeps Ray Bud real, unlike the cartoons around him. Kingdom Come needs that kind of stabilizing presence or it might skid right off the screen.
The screenplay by David Dean Botrell and Jessie Jones is based on their stage play, Dearly Departed, and the conversion isn't always smooth. McHenry's static lapses with the camera betray the story's stagey contrivances, the way everybody takes time to explain why they're upset, for the audience but not each other. Movies can streamline such exposition the way a stage can't, but McHenry's movie doesn't.
The performers are game to make themselves look foolish, with Loretta Devine's hyper-religious aunt and Cedric the Entertainer's speech-impeded minister leading the pack. Just below them on the caricature scale is Jada Pinkett Smith as Charisse, Junior's scrappy wife. The median between J's cool and those over-the-top roles can be found in Toni Braxton's stylish haughtiness, Darius McCrary's player-poses and Anderson's deflated teddy bear loser. Goldberg moderates the melee with poker-faced assurance.
Maybe you've noticed that Kingdom Come features an entirely African-American cast. McHenry and the authors are also black. It's tempting to make a big deal about the fact that Kingdom Come is another film depicting African-Americans outside the typical movie mean streets. Its release on the heels of The Brothers' success has me feeling a bit more confident that we're settling into a cinematic era when quality, not race, matters most.
Kingdom Come can be enjoyed for what it is and criticized for what it isn't by anyone. It has crossover appeal only because many people still draw a line to be crossed. Even some black filmmakers are getting tired of being propped up as pioneers and just want to be considered good pan-racial storytellers. Like The Brothers, McHenry's film is part of the compromise between white Hollywood convention and diversity the industry can settle into and satisfied audiences will follow.
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MOVIE REVIEW
Kingdom Come
- Grade: B-
- Director: Doug McHenry
- Cast: LL Cool J, Jada Pinkett Smith, Vivica A. Fox, Whoopi Goldberg, Loretta Devine, Toni Braxton, Cedric the Entertainer, Darius McCrary, Anthony Anderson
- Screenplay: David Dean Botrell, Jessie Jones, based on their stage play, Dearly Departed
- Rating: PG; profanity, sexual situations
- Running time: 93 min.
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