Roscoe redefines ‘waste of time’

Welcome…Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins Spyglass Entertainment/Universal Pictures Directed by Malcolm D. Lee Starring Martiwn Lawrence, Mo’Nique and Mike Epps

No peppers out of

I refuse to believe that “Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins” was so much as pitched before the WGA strike began in November. This script wasn’t written – it was assembled, unscrupulously borrowing plot devices and dialogue from the decade’s worst comedies about love and family. It is a veritable melting pot of jokes long past their expiration date, simmering in the communal degradation of its cast and stirred up into a sour southern gumbo from hell.

Talk show mogul Roscoe Jenkins (Martin Lawrence) is visiting his southern hometown for the first time in nine years, and one can hardly blame him for staying away for so long. His family is an abrasive collection of cheats and hypocrites, and when they converge on his childhood home it makes for the most horrifying family reunion since “The House of Yes,” complete with the incest. Oh, right, his sister Betty (Mo’Nique) frequently and explicitly fantasizes about her cousin. The movie is so crass that you actually expect them to consummate their relationship by the end.

Roscoe is too busy neglecting his young son and instigating fistfights to realize that his fiancee is a spiteful, domineering lunatic. How could he notice, though, when there is scarcely a likable character in the entire cast to measure her against? One of the few is his childhood crush Lucinda (Nicole Ari Parker), conveniently visiting the Jenkins household for the weekend. Nine years later and she still has nothing better to do than go to someone else’s family reunion. Roscoe has to choose between the narcissistic sex kitten and the southern sweetheart, and if you’ve ever seen a movie, you can probably guess how this works out.

The story is so riddled with cliches that I wish I could say you’ve seen it all before, but if you’re lucky you haven’t and you never will. Several major plotlines and themes are even taken directly from last year’s “Mr. Woodcock,” which was trite enough before being plagiarized. Is this really what the bottom of the barrel looks like now?

Maybe it’s a moot point, considering that this material is nothing to be proud of, original or not. At least “Woodcock” and most other movies in the all-but-damned subgenre of family reunion comedies have the benefit of a semi-likable protagonist. Roscoe Jenkins is an uncouth jerk just like the rest of his family, which must be why the preview audience took such pleasure in seeing his genitals pulverized by a tree trunk.

A comedy falling flat is nothing unusual, particularly when the humor is lowbrow. “Roscoe Jenkins,” however, is special. It isn’t simply a tasteless or failed attempt. It is irredeemably mean-spirited, the essence of unfunny. It is the very opposite of humor itself, instilling feelings of anger and shame for having witnessed it. If hearing Mo’Nique talk about her relative’s sex appeal is insufficiently discomforting, wait until cousin Reggie (Mike Epps) walks in on her in the shower shaving her breasts. He thought that he was spying on a different girl, but it turned out to be Mo’Nique, and everyone knows that nothing is funnier than a guiltless sexual predator.

Better yet is a scene in which a big dog has graphic sex with a tiny dog, complete with close-ups of their moaning orgasmic faces. I expected more subtlety from the director of “Undercover Brother.”

This movie is misogynistic, cruel and deeply unsettling. Roscoe learns that women aren’t objects, but that doesn’t stop him from beating his rival for Lucinda’s affections and taking her home like a first place trophy. Whether or not Betty and her cousin ever have incestuous sex, her shameless carnal desire for him is revolting. If you love Martin Lawrence’s typical mugging for the camera or you have a sadistic desire to see him subjected to a variety of physical and psychological humiliations, you may find something worthwhile hidden deep within this movie’s cold, black heart. If not, and you one day find yourself in Hell’s Cineplex that is showing only this and “Meet the Spartans,” see the latter. It’s shorter.

This movie’s assault on your notions of what constitutes acceptable human behavior nearly breaks the two-hour mark, continuing long into the end credits.

“That’s the thing about family,” Roscoe concludes, “unpredictable, and we love them.” The same cannot be said about this movie and its forsaken cast.