Kingdom Come (2001) ⭐ 5.5 | Comedy, Drama (original) (raw)
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I had the privilege of viewing this movie twice and laughed just as hard the second time around. The film does well at portraying the strong bonds within an African American family despite any circumstances. I recommend this family film to all.
Warm, wistful, human, laugh-out-loud funny movie about family, love, dreams
What a delightful movie! It's about family, and love, and dreams, and how we get along in this world -- especially with our nearest and not-always-dearest. It's warm and wistful and laugh-out-loud funny!
As for Goldberg's part, though promotions may have given her high billing, in fact her part is minuscule. But even if she'd been absent, this cast did more than enough to entertain.
LL Cool J did a fine job in the lead, only his name betraying his rap origins. He was joined by a host of other talented actors, including a favorite of mine, Loretta Devine, as a classic "momma." Another performance I particularly enjoyed was Cedric the Entertainer's role of the Reverend.
But everybody was good! Great ensemble acting -- _everyone_ was just right, including even the bit players, and they all blended into a very believable whole. The dialogue was witty, capturing exactly the character types, but down-to-earth without resorting to cheap crudity.
I kept thinking, "This would make an excellent play for community theater!" Great character types, great major roles, lots of smaller and non-speaking parts, easy to set. Then the credits showed that it had been adapted from David Dean Bottrell's play "Dearly Departed." It made me long to 'tread the boards' again -- join a great cast like that and take part in the play's warmth, truth and wry good humor.
The funeral of a hard-to-love father brings together his extended family, with their various relational wrinkles, all of which are plausibly solved by the end.
The story is kind, forgiving of human foibles, and in good taste throughout. The 'bathroom humor' mentioned in another review is a very light, one-time thing -- gas due to indigestion -- that is also a necessary plot device. I don't see how it could have been handled any better another way.
My satellite service will be showing this film all month, and I plan to watch it a couple more times. And beyond its humor, because of its warm heart and human hope I intend to buy the video.
This absolutely outstanding film is an total delight.
There were lots of big laugh-out-loud scenes, great humour, wit and charm.
LL Cool J absolutely walks away with the film in his amazing acting job as the son of the man that no one likes but they have all come together to bury.
As my friends and family will tell you, I have always had a not-so-secret crush on Whoopi Goldberg. This film reinforces that crush she is the rock in the maelstrom of insanity that surrounds the burial of her much-despised husband.
The characters are quietly complex especially LL Cool J's character who has demons that pursue him, including the inability to mourn the father that he disliked so much.
Most of the humour is fairly subtle and cerebral though there is one absolutely great scene that slides into bathroom humour about the affect of Mexican food on the minister (Cedric the Entertainer) that officiates at the funeral.
This is a family story it could be anyone's family. It is irrelevant that the family is African American: this family crosses all colour lines. They behave badly at times but they are there for each other in a way that all families should be but seldom are.
You would think that with Toni Braxton in the film any singing would be done by her not so. There is a very nice 3 woman church choir that includes the Saturday Night Live alum, Ellen Cleghorn. The song at the funeral is sung by Jada Pinkett Smith and she does a great job.
In checking viewer votes there were almost as many `1' votes as there were `10s' I think that some people just didn't get it. Their loss.
A Feel Good Movie, but scarily realistic
Well, from the little press I saw regarding this movie when it first came out, I'll admit I wasn't running to the theater. (I wasn't even running to the video store.) However, when it came on HBO recently, my sister told me to sit down and watch it, to compare it to our family.
This movie was almost scary in how closely it mimicked our gatherings (especially funerals, but all gatherings in general). I really felt like the writers knew us, as they hit several depictions right on the head.
The Slocums are more the typical Black family than most movies will show nowadays--sure there are a few people who lose their way now and again, but family brings them back around. (What family isn't slightly dysfunctional anyway? It just makes family gatherings more amusing. Heck--my family even has the three holy-terror-boys who run around every gathering destroying everything.)
I'm not going to say that the acting was outstanding, or the script completely original because it wasn't. THE SCRIPT WAS REALISTIC, THOUGH. It wasn't original because anyone could have sat through a funeral in their family and copied things word for word. I do recommend this movie. The last minute is a little cheesy, but hey, the rest of the movie works so well that you accept it. There weren't any unnecessary curses, gratuitous violence or sex. It was just a movie about family. What is more real than that?
This is the ultimate feel-good movie because you feel like it is real. Some movies are just too contrived, but I had to smile to myself at the end of this movie. It shows how the strength of your family helps you cope and heal together.
There is only ONE thing wrong with this film
There is only one thing wrong with "Kingdom Come": not enough people are going to see it, simply in the mistaken belief that this is a "black" film, which it is not. The film is universal, both in theme and message. It likewise deserves to be universal in its appeal.
The plotline is simple: a "mean and surly" man (widow Whoopi Goldberg's description of him) dies suddenly, leaving the disparate members of his family to struggle with their feelings for him -- and for each other -- as they prepare for his funeral. How they each manage to reconcile their feelings for him -- and, in some cases, reconcile with each other -- is at the heart of the film. And "Kingdom Come" has PLENTY of heart, make no mistake. That heart rings through loud and clear, amazingly enough, in a film that can be outrageously hilarious while simultaneously remaining touching and true.
Yes, all the characters are Afro-American. And yes, the settings, the surrounding culture and the conventions are all Afro-American (by the way, the writers indulge in some sly -- but on the whole, affectionate -- digs at that culture and conventions). More importantly, however, the underlying emotions and motivations have nothing to do with ethnicity. These are people, nothing more and nothing less, coping or at least learning to cope with a traumatic time in their lives. How do they achieve this? How does anyone? Certainly not by being black or white or this or that, but by . . . growing.
And grow these characters do, each of them, propelled by a cast that is universally both standout and stand-up, in a film that is fully as wise as it is wild. The gospel number at the end is, perhaps, a bit over the top in its implausibility, and maybe in real life not all of the characters will manage to accomplish all the goals that the film implies, but what of it? Perhaps, in the end, what redeems us as a species are our aspirations, rather than our achievements. That, too, is universal.
Just like this film.
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By what name was Kingdom Come (2001) officially released in India in English?