JoeytheBrit
Major Spoilers AheadBig Mama is the loving matriarchal figure of a large Family who gather every Sunday to enjoy the 'soul food' that she cooks for them, and to hear the nuggets of wisdom the old girl habitually dispenses regarding Family. Big Mama is big on Family. In fact the word 'Family' pops up in almost every sentence that she speaks. And every time she speaks it, it sounds just like it's spelt here –with a capital F. Now, the reason Big Mama bangs on about Family so much is because she realises how unimportant the concept is to her three equally sassy but divisively different daughters. It is only their mother that has held the Family together for so many years, so when B.M. falls into a coma after an operation, the ties that bind them quickly begin to fray…SOUL FOOD is an over-sentimentalised movie that, in terms of its story, operates largely on the level of a soap-opera, and therefore wastes the acting skills of a talented young cast. The characters are all stereotypes, and are forced to recite such awful lines as "You got to learn to love yourself" (this nugget of wisdom coming from a pre-teen boy to his uncle, who is driving around town with a gun in the glove compartment of his car), and "A man has to be a man." It makes you wonder whether scriptwriters of stuff like this ever think about what they are writing, whether they ever sit back and ask themselves whether anybody ever talks like that outside of a church in a tent, and whether they actually speak the words out loud to try and divine whether they sound ridiculous or not. The worrying thing is, they probably do…The story is made up of three clear acts, in the first, BM's influence over the Family, and the relationships between the various characters, is established; the second act focuses on the deterioration of the Family after BM lapses into a coma, and the final act shows us how they are re-united following her death. Of these three acts, the second is by far the best. For a while we actually grow interested in these characters who seem shallow only because they have been so poorly sketched. Even during this brief improvement in quality, the plot twists are too often telegraphed long before they arrive, and too many inconsistencies arise; for example, one of the daughter's, a successful, yuppie-type lawyer calls out the thugs on her brother-in-law, whom she mistakenly believes has beaten her sister. She does this at the hairdressers where the attack happened, while they are still trying to coax the crying sister from the ladies… Lawyers do that, you know – they never bother to find out the facts before taking a decision to act. And this is during the better part of the film, remember. The last forty minutes is completely laughable. Every character is suckered into a rendezvous at Big Mama's old house by the precocious young son of one of the daughters, to whom BM, in the few brief moments of consciousness she enjoyed between her five-week coma and death, has entrusted the task of holding the Family together. He does this by kidding all the adults individually that there is a small fortune hidden in the house. Daft, eh? Even dafter is the fact that there actually *is* a small fortune hidden in the house, hidden in Uncle Pete's room. Did I mention Uncle Pete? Well, he's this old guy who never emerges from his room. His meals are left on a tray outside his door, and he pulls the tray into his room with his walking stick so that nobody gets to see him.No, really: it's all true, I swear
David, Film Freak
Wonderfully acted and well-written comedy/drama (more drama, though) about an extended family who spend their sundays together with a huge dinner. What's on the menu? Soul Food of course!But when Big Mama Joe (and the glue of the family) falls into a coma the family fall out, it's up to Maxine's boy Ahmad, (and story narrator) to bring the big family together again for another sunday dinner.Of course when portraying a realistic family it helps to have good actors, and with a stellar cast including Vanessa L. Williams, Vivica A. Fox and Nia Long they pull it off successfully.Just like what the tagline says: Reality with a bite.
DP-4
OK, so I waited for 4 years to see this movie. Silly me. This movie was very good. Not great, but very good. The acting really carried what was a mediocre script. The movie did peak my interest in how this family addressed issues openly among themselves. They did not try to sweep things under the rugs. Rather, they used "Sunday dinner" as an opportunity to address tough family issues such an infidelity, gambling addition and encarceration.
The film was also successful at capturing many aspects of a typical, 90's African-American family. Being half African-American, I can see traces of my very own family in this film and thought that the script was very true, open and honest.
