c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Earlier this month, the No. 2 film in the nation was a movie about redemption set almost entirely inside a church.

But few people I’ve talked to, even in religious circles, had heard of “First Sunday,” the comedy starring Ice Cube and “Saturday Night Live” alumnus Tracy Morgan. No one else I know besides me has seen it.

And that’s too bad.

Now, I don’t want to make “First Sunday” sound like a masterpiece because it most certainly is not. In fact, “First Sunday” really isn’t a very good movie.

On the contrived scale, the screenplay lands somewhere between a Hallmark Original Movie and an after-school special. There are enough slapstick cliches and stereotyped caricatures to fill an entire season on the CW: the dopey-but-lovable hoodlum, the quintessential church lady, the over-the-top fey choir director, and a money-hungry deacon.

What makes “First Sunday” a movie worth seeing is its soul, about which it is unapologetically forthright and eloquent.

“First Sunday” follows two down-on-their-luck childhood friends, Durrell (Cube) and LeeJohn (Morgan), who get pinched by the police in inner-city Baltimore while driving a van full of presumably stolen, pimped-out wheelchairs for a Jamaican street gang. A merciful-yet-maniacal judge spares them prison time, but sentences them to 5,000 hours of community service.

While picking up garbage across the street from a big neighborhood church, they follow a beautiful woman (who turns out to be the pastor’s fiery daughter) into a swinging gospel service, where they learn the congregation has raised more than $200,000 for a building fund.

Because the Jamaican gang has promised to kill LeeJohn if he doesn’t come up with $12,000 for the lost wheelchairs, and because Durrell’s baby mama has threatened to take their son to Atlanta if he can’t come up with $17,000 to keep her hair salon open, the duo decides to break into the church and raid the building fund.

You can probably guess the next third of the film: The robbery goes awry,hostages are taken, and hilarity (or attempts at it, anyway) ensues.

“First Sunday” was written and directed by David E. Talbert, a successful playwright in what is called, variously, “urban theater,” “gospel theater,” or the “chitlin’ circuit.” For more than 15 years, Talbert, the son and grandson of pastors and Pentecostal evangelists, has packed venues with plays such as “Love on Lay Away” and “Lawd Ha’ Mercy.” He clearly knows (and loves) the world from which this genre grows.

Most critics mention Talbert in the same breath as Tyler Perry, another writer/director who started on the urban theater circuit before translating his plays _ most of them featuring the take-no-prisoners, gun-toting big-mama Madea (played by Perry himself in drag) _ into wildly popular films such as “Diary of a Mad Black Woman.”

Both Perry and Talbert’s film work is far from cinematic greatness in any superficial artistic sense. But both have their considerable charms and spiritual chops.

There’s something so satisfying and comforting about the wisdom spouted by the infectiously funny Madea character. She’s not pious, not terribly likable, and carries a gun (not a Bible). But the woman is spiritually profound.

Madea says things like, “Some people are leaves on a tree … (They’ll) wither and die and blow away. There ain’t no need to be praying over a leaf to be resurrected. When it’s dead, it’s gone. Let it go!”

I found a similar beauty in “First Sunday” in the nuanced way the good church folks _ among them the pastor, his daughter and the warm-hearted “Sister Doris” _ treat Durrell and LeeJohn. One startlingly tender scene between LeeJohn and Sister Doris brought tears to my eyes. Judging from the sniffles emanating from a young couple a few rows behind me in the theater, I wasn’t alone.

A whole lot of grace was hiding behind the sight gags and slapstickery.

I don’t want to spoil the end of the film, but suffice to say I’ve yet to see a clearer depiction of the true message of Christianity on the big screen.

Love’s power is limitless. Forgiveness is always possible. True change does happen.

And a movie doesn’t have to be good to be great.

(Cathleen Falsani is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and author of “The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People.”)

KRE/RB END FALSANI750 words

A photo of Cathleen Falsani is available via https://religionnews.com.