New buddy comedy features the late Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes.
As good Memphis residents we’d be wrong not to plug the upcoming comedy Soul Men, which features the final screen appearance of lifelong Memphian Isaac Hayes. Bernie Mac, who also passed away within hours of Hayes last August, stars with Samuel L. Jackson in the bawdy road/buddy comedy. Frankly, the film might have a hard time overcoming the eerily-timed deaths (a wildfire of “Is Soul Men cursed?” articles ran over the Internet last summer) even if its plot and character beats didn’t look so rigidly formulaic. But Mac and Hayes were both gifted entertainers, and Jackson is riding an artistic resurgance the last two years or so, so we’re hoping the film offers a swan song worthy of its tragic significance.
Mac and Jackson play Floyd and Louis, long-since faded soul backup singers – sounding vaguely like Sam & Dave by way of Rufus Thomas – recruited to play a memorial tribute to their recently-deceased band leader (John Legend). They travel cross country to Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, each hoping to grab the sizeable performance fee for their own needs. True to the form of such comedies, they reconnect despite the ensuing years of acrimony and even bond with Floyd’s teenage daughter (Sharon Leal).
You can imagine how things work out, but all things notwithstanding this was never meant as a revelatory film. Still, the shadow of poignancy is likely to fall long and deep. One report suggests director Malcolm D. Lee (Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins) redited and softened the film’s tone out of respect for its late co-stars. Posthumously released comedies are seldom successful; by way of example, the two films released after John Candy’s 1994 death withered in the reality of his passing. But again, Soul Men’s comfortable familiarity might offer a way to avoid that pitfall. We’re also willing to believe Mac’s mountainous screen presence might tower over the reality of his demise. Similarly, Hayes appears as himself, and we’re hoping at least part of the film-climaxing “big show” has the big man doing his thing.
The film opens nationwide November 7.
- Michael Kabel
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