The Wedding Date DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

For me, Martin Lawrence's stuff has always been hit or miss. He usually delivers when he's sharing the spotlight in flicks like Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, Nothing to Lose and Wild Hogs. However, when he's the main focal point of the movie like Black Knight, Rebound and National Security, the results aren't often quite as good. This might be an exception to the rule though with Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins, as he is the main star of the film... although he's surrounded by an enormous supporting cast (figuratively and literally, in some cases) in this fairly entertaining but formulaic flick.

The premise of this flick is tore right out of the new Hollywood playbook. The film centers on Roscoe Jenkins (Martin Lawrence) who transformed himself into Dr. RJ Stevens, who hosts a popular TV talk show that is so successful it's moving to primetime. He also just got engaged to the beautiful Bianca (Joy Bryant), the latest winner of Survivor, he has a wonderful young son Jamaal (Damani Roberts) and the world is his oyster. However, that success came at the cost of shunning his family, who he hasn't seen in nine years and when he's summoned to come back to his roots in Fly Springs, Georgia for his parents (James Earl Jones and Margaret Avery) 50th anniversary celebration he comes back home with his hyper-aggressive fianc&#233e (and her annoying little lap-dog) and gets one hell of a reality check... not to mention the re-introduction of an old crush, Lucinda (Nicole Ari Parker).

Sounds familiar, eh? Just Friends? Dan in Real Life, perhaps? This movie isn't very far removed from those flicks or any other of the number of flicks that have been riding the premise to death. This successful guy from with a sad past coming home to his crazy family is just getting old, folks. That's not to say there isn't any entertainment value here, but this premise is a dead horse that Hollywood really needs to stop beating.

Martin Lawrence seems to have matured quite a lot over the past few years and it doesn't seem like he's forcing his brand of humor down our throats as much as he used to. Sure, there are still plenty of his trademark facial expressions and dopey gags (which are hit or miss as well), but overall, it seems his performance here and in others of late seem to be dialed-down a bit, much more mature and, as a result, more entertaining. He delivers quite a nice performance here, one of the best I've seen from him in awhile, as Roscoe Jenkins, a man who had to break away from his family and is constantly trying to win their respect.

Lawrence is joined by a simply huge supporting cast, most of which deliver in full. James Earl Jones and Margaret Avery are wonderful as Roscoe's parents, Michael Clarke Duncan shows some wonderfully surprising comedic chops as Roscoe's brother Otis, Nicole Ari Parker is delightful as family friend Lucinda, Cedric the Entertainer is his usual funny self as cousin and nemesis of "Scoe," Clyde and Mo'Nique is just a riot as Roscoe's sister Betty. The only two I really didn't dig here were Mike Epps as the hustler cousin Reggie and Joy Bryant as the way way way over-the-top pseudo-celeb Bianca. Still, collectively, they all do click together as a big, very weird family and you can just tell that everyone had a blast making this movie.

While the underlying premise maybe have been stolen for the trillionth time, writer-director Malcolm D. Lee certainly does have skills on both sides of the hyphen and he delivers with some colorful characters, just the right amount of character development for the right characters and, while there are a lot of just corny and non-entertaining parts, the stuff that is good here makes up for the bad... not by much, but it does.

Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins is a decent flick that could've done well to try and revamp this played-out return of the prodigal son type of story, but with this amazing ensemble cast and some decent writing and direction, it's worth a watch.

We get these features started off with an Alternate Opening, which is actually pretty good. It's not a whole lot longer and it would've set us up a little better with the disdain he had for his family. Oh well.

Next up we get some Deleted and Extended Scenes. Normally I'm not a huge fan of these scenes, but we get some pretty good stuff here, actually. A lot of these are crap, but there are some hidden nuggets of decent material within the majority of crap here. Granted, the flick ran pretty long anyway, but they should've cut certain parts from the flick and put in some of these solid deleted scenes instead. Altogether, these scenes run 21 minutes long and, for the good ones, it's worth sitting through the bad ones.

Outtakes are next and, like the deleted and extended , there are some pretty good things here, but there's a lot of crap too. A lot of Mo'Nique's stuff is pretty damn funny because she just goes off here. Some of this stuff at the end aren't really even outtakes, more like deleted scenes, but there's some good stuff in this 18-minute reel.

Bringing The Family Together is a little making-of featurette that's pretty standard stuff. We get interview bits with the huge cast and the writer/director Malcolm D. Lee and some of the producers. It's a pretty good featurette that runs for a nice 11-minute length and it's worth watching.

On Location: Getting Down and Dirty is a featurette that talks about them shooting on location in Shreveport, Louisiana and the experience of shooting there, including challenges of the erratic weather. We also get a nice part about the obstacle course and how it evolved from a simple race into an obstacle course. This seven-minute long featurette gives us some nice insight into the making of the movie.

Going Home: Real Stories of the Cast and this is a pretty cool featurette where we hear from the cast about their actual experiences about the actors going home after making it big. We hear some great stories from Martin Lawrence, Mo'Nique, Cedric the Entertainer, Mike Epps, James Earl Jones, Nicole Ari Parker, Joy Bryant and Michael Clarke Duncan. It's a very nice five-minute featurette that gives you a little glimpse at how these actors feel about their families and going home for the first time after their success.

The only other thing we get here is a We Are Family Music Video by Joe. It's a standard music vid with footage from the movie intercut with Joe singing and stuff. It's OK, I guess, but it's funy that these music vids on DVDs are probably the only place you get to see actual full music videos these days.

The disc is presented in the anamorphic widescreen format, in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio.

The sound is handled through the Dolby Digital 5.1 format.

The front cover is pretty simple with a big title card up top, a big critic quote on the bottom and a shot of Martin Lawrence in the foreground and his crazy family in the background. What's funny is, when I first took a look at this DVD, just at first glance, I didn't recognize any of these big names here like James Earl Jones, Michael Clarke Duncan, Cedric the Entertainer, Mo'nique and Mike Epps. Maybe it was the outfits they had on, or maybe just with all of them together no one really stood out, but it was a little weird, and cool I guess. The back has another critic quote, a synopsis, a big shot of Mo'nique beating up Martin Lawrence, three smaller shots, a weird special features listing along with the billing block and tech specs. Not too shabby.

Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins offers some solid entertainment in both the flick and extras and, while this might not be one to buy (maybe) it's certainly worth a look to check out this crazy Jenkins family.