| 'Kingdom Come' |
| Director: Doug McHenry Stars: Vivica A. Fox, Jada Pinkett Smith, Loretta Devine MPAA Rating: PG, for thematic elements, language and sensuality  |
Won't say he wasn't, because he was, according to his wife, Raynelle (Whoopi Goldberg).
Doesn't matter that he just died.
He'll be buried right and proper, with a Methodist church service by the intestinally impaired Reverend Hooker (Cedric the Entertainer).
But don't say Bud wasn't mean and surly, 'cause he was, and Raynelle knows it, and she'll tell you matter-of-factly as all get-out.
That's why she 'cut him off' 20 years ago. 'Cept for once.
Just as a group of Jewish men scurried toward the funeral of a friend in 'Bye-Bye, Braverman' and a group of Pittsburghers collected to bury their patriarch in the locally filmed 'Passed Away,' the black family in 'Kingdom Come' have gathered because they've lost Bud to a fatal stroke.
Bud, though, seems to have had only the most incidental impact on any of them. He's hardly mentioned, and his presence, or absence, isn't much felt.
His wake and funeral are the apparatus for gathering under one roof the Slocomb family with their unresolved issues and, because most are of a kindred spirit, soothing reconciliation.
All three of Raynelle's adult children are present.
There's the youngest - the heavy-set, unmarried Delightful (Masasa), who seems not to have left home.
And the eldest, Ray (LL Cool J), a garage mechanic who is restless and impatient, and his diplomatic wife, Lucille (Vivica A. Fox).
And in between, there's Junior (Anthony Anderson), who's 33 and going on 14, and his manipulative wife, Charisse (Jada Pinkett Smith), and their three supposedly unruly children.
(It's one of the film's failings that, because the edges are so vaguely sketched, we don't get a good enough sense of the lives beyond the script or of behavior that hasn't been specifically scripted.)
Bud's sister Marguerite (Loretta Devine) is the family's most scripturally oriented member. It annoys her no end that her smoking, corn-braided son Royce (Darius McCrary) would skip the funeral if she'd let him. He'd rather work on his life's ambition to collect welfare.
Singer Toni Braxton has a peripheral role as Juanita.
Some of the acting in 'Kingdom Come' has a sweetened, over-emphatic quality, but it's one of the too-rare films about African-American life, like 'Soul Food,' to eschew raucous comedy and stereotypes in favor of a heartfelt look at ordinary people at a pivotal moment in their lives.
Doug McHenry ('New Jack City') directed from a screenplay that David Dean Bottrell and Jessie Jones based on their play, 'Dearly Departed,' which reached off-Broadway in 1991.
It reminds us that life is too short and that people don't last forever or necessarily get the chance they might have expected for final amends.
'Kingdom Come' isn't all serious, though. Much of it is set, after all, at DePeu's Funeral Home, where the motto is, 'Your pit stop to the afterlife.'
Ed Blank is the Tribune-Review's film critic. He can be reached at (412) 854-5555 or eblank@tribweb.com .
