Welcome Home
Roscoe Jenkins

Martin Lawrence stars as Roscoe Jenkins, who is better known as Dr. RJ Stevens – a cross between Oprah, Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer, who has one of the most popular television shows and books in America. He has decided to marry his current girlfriend, Bianca (Joy Bryant), who is just as competitive and driven as he, but she has never met his family because he lives in Los Angeles, while the rest of the family lives down south. With a desire to introduce his son, Jamaal (Damani Roberts), and fiancée to the whole brood, Roscoe agrees to travel back to his small home town in Georgia to celebrate his parents’ wedding anniversary.

When revisiting his roots, will Roscoe drop his Hollywood persona to reconnect with his family and who he is inside? Will he get wrapped up in his lifelong rivalry with Clyde (Cedric The Entertainer)?

Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins is another attempt to make a Tyler Perry-esque movie mixing ribald comedy and a weak attempt at reaching out to your soft side. The movie has a few good moments, but they are buried underneath a mountain of bad moments.

Writer/director Malcolm D. Lee is faithfully and fatally committed to producing a gross out comedy that undeniably grosses with doggies engaging in their own style of the horizontal mambo, Roscoe making strange faces when he reaches a certain level of sexual satisfaction, scenes where people talk about jumping bones and hood rats, along with many more moments that will make you wonder why that stuff was so funny when you were 14-years old. Sadly, Lee, Lawrence and plenty of others still think it is funny and deliver this stuff throughout the movie more often than pizza gets delivered to John Travolta’s house (that dude has put on some weight over the years).

However, Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins truly fails when Lee delivers a predictable and sappy ending, no matter how much you might agree with the sentiment. All of the sudden, after a movie full of silliness and low brow humor, it becomes all serious! How are we supposed to feel anything for characters who have been acting like cartoons for the first hour? Up to this point, Lawrence has been the subject of slapstick torture and displayed every lame contorted facial reaction he can generate to prop up some unfunny jokes. Mo’Nique was doing her best to be the brassy big lady throwing her weight around, but we have seen these same jokes over and over again and done better before. Meanwhile, Mike Epps and Michael Clarke Duncan are more like window dressing than participants.

Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins isn’t even good enough to welcome into your home in DVD form.

Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins is rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, language and some drug references