REVIEW
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 Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins
2008
Certificate: 12 | Runtime: 110 | Director: Malcolm D. Lee
Starring: Martin Lawrence, James Earl Jones, Margaret Avery
 
Roscoe Jenkins (Lawrence), or RJ Stevens as he's known to his fans, is a popular daytime television host. His show is about to go prime time, and he is engaged to reality show winner Bianca (Joy Bryant). Things are certainly looking up! But after much nagging from home, he returns there for his parents' 50th wedding anniversary, with his son Jamaal (Damani Roberts) and a moody Bianca in tow. While there, things just don't go Roscoe's way. His high school crush Lucinda (Nicole Ari Parker) is there with his competitive cousin Clyde (Cedric the Entertainer), while Roscoe's relationship with his entire family, and particularly with his father, has never been comfortable.
I honestly have no idea what the worst thing about Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins is. It could be that it fails at pretty much every attempt at being funny. Or it could be that it tries to shoehorn some bizarre and highly saccharine sentimentality into what is essentially a film about Martin Lawrence falling down and talking all sassy. Or it could be the bad acting, or the writing that's so atrocious it feels like half the film is ad-libbed. I really have no clue which element I disliked most. The film is a veritable smorgasbord of ineptitude!
If I were a white supremacist, and wanted to make a film packed with negative stereotypes of black people, Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins would give me more than a few ideas. The large majority of Roscoe's family members are crude caricatures; a fact that amazes me, considering that the entire cast (not to mention the writer/director) is black. This sort of exaggerated stereotyping can be funny if handled correctly, but every single trait these characters have make them unlikeable, not amusing, and that's what kills it. Two of the few who can't be put in this group are Roscoe's parents; James Earl Jones and Margaret Avery. In fact, it's only when the film focuses on them that it calms down and the relentless barrage of shouting, screaming and overacting ceases. The only other people who make theirs character seem relatively human are Parker and Michael Clarke Duncan, as Roscoe's brother Otis.
The film really struggles to be funny. It takes a see what sticks approach to jokes, with slapstick, gross-out, verbal and many other types of humour chucked at the wall. The only problem is that all of it stinks. It even tries dog on dog sex to elicit a few giggles; something that tends to be used when writers have truly run out of ideas. And the character interaction is just appalling. They stand and yell at each other, throwing around a load of insults, and in a manner which suggests the script simply read 'Actors do your own thing here'.
And then there's the gushing sentimentality to deal with. The whole film has an theme about how fathers should support their sons; Roscoe's father didn't do it enough, and nor does Roscoe. But this is all handled in such a forced manner that none of it rings true. It's also very difficult to take a film seriously when, in the space of four or five minutes, one of them gets sprayed by a skunk, crushes his testicles, and then has a serious family moment.
You can't blame Martin Lawrence for everything that's wrong with Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins. While he does seem to enjoy appearing in rubbish like this, and while he remains as bland, unfunny and as half-hearted as has become familiar, the uselessness of this film is very much a group effort.© David Mercier
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