» Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (Widescreen)

Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (Widescreen) Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Funny, funny, funny
Comment: This is a good ole' gut bustin' black family reunion comedy. Some parts are a little extra in a Sha-nay-nay kind of way but that's Martin Lawrence. I laughed very hard watching this movie and just had to add it to my library.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Cast/Story, but some flaws
Comment: This movie is about family, values, decisions, relationships, and old hurts. Roscoe Jenkins has left is small southern town family and made it big in Hollywood complete with fancy cars, mansion, and gorgeous albeite superficial wife. He reluctantly returns home to his parents 50th wedding anniversary celebration where his fame and money mean nothing and where he comically is confronted by old pains and his longtime nemesis, his cousin with whom had be in competition as a child for the affection of Nicole Ari's character.

The story unfolds in pretty predictable fashion with a backdrop of oldschool Black southern values. And this is where the movie is flawed for me. Many of us can watch this movie and laugh because we recognize some of the characterizations in our own family. So much of the movie can feel quite authentic in its repesentation of some of our Black families except for one thing that was all to present in the movie.

The casting in this movie was outstanding except for Mo'Nique. Does the woman ever act or does she just bring her loud, brash act to the studio and cut loose. Now this is not to say that we do not have these types in our family, they certainly are there. BUT.. are they so brash in front of the matriarch of a traditional Black southern family?

From going down south to connect with our roots, to sending our children there to save them from large city crime, the one thing that we revere about our families down south is those old traditional values, and one of them is that the children, no matter what the age, ALWAYS show respect to their elders! I just could not reconcile Mo'Nique's excessive use of the word bitch in front of her parents with what I know about these families.

Just as disturbing was the rampant use of "nigger" in this movie. Too sad that the term has been so sanitized in American culture that it makes its way into mainstream cinema without anyone batting an eye. Of course, that it is used by Blacks is supposed to make it less offensive!

Other than finding some of the language incongruent with the setting, my only gripe with this film is the sudden transformation of Roscoe Jenkins. Of course, anyone who has ever watched a movie sees this coming from a mile away, but the writer and director would have given the movie a great deal more artistic credibility if this transformation had unfolded in more time than a short car ride.

I really enjoyed this movie. The acting was very good. I laughed. I cried, but I have to say that almost everytime MO'Nique opened her mouth or when nigger/ niggah.. however you want to call it, was used, I cringed and it detracted from the overall enjoyment of the movie. It was all too out of place and inappropriate for this particular movie.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Surprise Hit at my House!
Comment: Bringing home Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (Widescreen) on a whim was one of the best things I've ever done to bring laughter into my house. It's funny all the way through and if you have a family... you should find it funny too!

"Roscoe" has tried to distance himself from his family for years and goes home hoping to show his 'new and imporoved' self to those he thinks should care, and they don't. Frustrated and angry, he ends up trying even harder to show them the new Roscoe and of course, he fails. He learns some valuable lessons about family and what's important in life before it's all over, and ultimately finds out that no matter what you do... you're family is still a part of who you are, like it or not!

A really funny movie with a solid message. I loved it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins - Review
Comment: This was an excellent movie! It is very funny. Some parts were not PG-rated, but as a whole, it is a very good comedy for ADULT audiences.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: 3.5--Going home is not always a vacation....
Comment: "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 along.

Roscoe (Martin Lawrence), is a talk show host who is depicted as a decent but ambitious man who revels in the celebrity life he shares with his fiancé, Bianca Kittles (Joy Bryant). As a winner of the television show, "Survival," Bianca has transferred all the driven, maniacal aspects of her personality needed for that win to her day-to-day life. In a very L.A. sort of way, not seen on screen since perhaps Robin Givens played several roles as a Black man eater, Bianca keeps her world on a tight leash of accomplishment. She knows exactly what she wants, how she is going to get it and what is clearly unacceptable in her realm of the high life.

Sure, Bianca's depiction is extreme--women are sort of thrown under the bus in this one--but the men don't come off looking much better. Martin Lawrence, Mike Epps and Cedric the Entertainer compete with Mo'Nique to be the sorriest and funniest of them all when they all gather in the South for a wedding anniversary celebration for Roscoe's parents. Down home, the successful Roscoe finds himself at the center of the, by now, stock story of the rich Black relative who comes home and has to deal with his relatives who are either ghetto (Mo'Nique), country (Cedric the Entertainer), broke and/or walking around with a loose screw (Mike Epps). The ways that the dysfunctional rich fit perfectly into this odd stew help to make this film funny in surprising ways. Another thing that works is the individual funny that each comedian brings to their role.

The final element that "Roscoe" has going for it is the fact that, unlike some movies, its storyline is not laughable. It actually makes sense and, despite the comedy, the script makes all the characters very human--flawed, but human. There is even some romance thrown into the mix that allows Nicole Ari Parker to once again play the role of the sweetheart. At the corners of ruckus--the obstacle course competitions, the predictable slapstick and overwrought throw-downs--the movie sets aside a few minutes to showcase rowdy exchanges among the veteran comics, passed through a PG-13 filter. Recommend to fans of the likes of this genre.

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