Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins

NEW YORK (CNS) - A 50th wedding anniversary degenerates into a verbal and physical brawl in "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins" (Universal). This unruly family farce is often entertaining, but also at times crude and seemingly desperate for laughs.

Successful television talk-show host RJ Stevens (Martin Lawrence) long ago left behind the rural Georgia clan that raised him, not to mention the name by which his relatives once knew him. His current upwardly mobile lifestyle involves docilely obeying his controlling fiancee, Bianca (Joy Bryant), and cheerleading for his 10-year-old son, Jamaal (Damani Roberts), at soccer practice.

At the boy's urging, RJ agrees to return home for the first time in nine years to attend his parents' (James Earl Jones and Margaret Avery) landmark anniversary celebration. What better way, he finally concludes, to show off how far he has come and how far his siblings and cousins back in Dry Springs haven't?

From tough-guy older brother Otis (Michael Clarke Duncan), who's the local sheriff, to aggressive sister Betty (Mo'Nique) and con-man cousin Reggie (Mike Epps), they're an eccentric bunch. But one figure in particular stands out: RJ's childhood nemesis, competitive cousin Clyde (Cedric the Entertainer) who was taken in by RJ's parents after being orphaned, and is now a flashy car salesman.

To RJ's consternation, no one in the family actually takes his big-city airs seriously. To them he's the same Roscoe who would always lose out to Clyde, in love as well as sports. (Their amorous competition concerned beautiful neighbor Lucinda, played by Nicole Ari Parker, who now shows up at the festivities as Clyde's guest.)

Of course, RJ's interest in Lucinda is reawakened. So too are old resentments toward Clyde.

Writer-director Malcolm D. Lee's film promotes some positive moral values and scores some telling points about its characters' various pretensions, especially through the wry patter of Epps' Reggie. But much of the humor concerns the characters' sexual habits, from the intimate details of RJ and Bianca's cohabitation to Betty's interest in prison inmates. There's even a running gag about the unlikely relationship between Bianca's lapdog and the family bloodhound.

When it can't get a laugh, "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins" is all too willing to settle for a snicker.

The film contains a nongraphic but aberrant premarital sexual encounter, partial frontal female nudity, one use of the f-word, much crude and pervasive crass language, some profanity, much sexual humor, drug references, a condom reference, gambling and dogs mating. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops