Who’s It It: Samuel L Jackson, Bernie Mac, Sharon Leal, Sean Hayes, John Legend, Isaac Hayes
The Basics: Someone pitched this as Dreamgirls meets Grumpy Old Men. You know they did. If it were the '70s they’d have said Sparkle meets The Sunshine Boys. But you get me. Two washed-up soul singers who hate each other take a therapeutic road trip to make a comeback at The Apollo. Then they find a young woman who might be the daughter of one of them and a wacky white guy who thinks he’s black and a mother/daughter team of supergroupies and on and on and on.
What’s The Deal: My favorite part of this miserable, opposite-of-funny movie is when Bernie Mac has sex with giganto-boobed porn star Vanessa Del Rio and he’s all bored by it. I also liked it when naughty '70s soul-singer Millie Jackson showed up in a cameo and swore at them. Sharon Leal (who was in
Dreamgirls herself) sings really nicely, too. That’s not bad. But yeah, pretty much everything else will make you want to stab yourself in the eyes.
Precise Moment When You Know You’re Doomed: When they show you the toothpaste-blue Cadillac convertible. Not only is that the moment when you realize you’ve been suckered into watching a rotten, episodic road movie, but it’s also when real life goes out the window. Because nobody in movies is allowed to road trip in one of those cushy Oprah & Gayle Chevrolets with a GPS. It has to be a vintage convertible or a disintegrating RV or VW bus with the door falling off. And this is the way rich Hollywood phonies think four-wheeled travel really is, too. They fly in private jets everywhere so they just assume everyone else is sputtering along in jalopies with constant engine problems and flat tires ripe with unrealized comedy potential.
Featuring The Wasted Talents Of: Hilarious character actor Jennifer Coolidge, as the mom half of the groupie team; and John Legend, whose biggest moment is pretending to be a corpse in a piano-shaped casket.
The Bernie Mac Legacy: Poor Bernie Mac. It sucks that he’s gone. But this is why it’s so important to choose your projects wisely. You don’t want to die before your time and have some piece of junk be the last major thing on your resume. For example, Meryl Streep will soon follow up Mamma Mia! with Doubt, for which she’ll most likely wind up nominated for another Oscar. But what if she’d been hit by a bus before then? She couldn’t make that thing fast enough. Anyway, remember Bernie Mac for being his not-bad-at-all sitcom and for the Ocean movies instead. R.I.P. Isaac Hayes, too.