Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Better Late Then Never

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

This is one of the best movies of the 90's. Although it was a hit at the box office when it came out and received very good reviews, it surprisingly received no Oscar nominations and didn't quite mark a revolution in African-American film-making that many critics predicted. However, speaking as a fan of the film ten years later, the film did spark a minor revolution that may have indirectly resulted in Tyler Perry's recent success.Also, Irma P. Hall should definitely have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in this movie, because she truly represented the glue that held the cast together. You could blame racism on the fact that she didn't get nominated, but when you consider that this movie came out the same year as such monumentally great films as "L.A. Confidential", "Good Will Hunting", "As Good As It Gets", "The Full Monty", "Donnie Brasco", and (perhaps most especially) "Titanic", one can understand why "Soul Food" got a bit lost in the shuffle.However, if this movie has one fundamental flaw, it is the fact that it was a movie about family, and really should have been a family movie. Heck, it was one of those movies that really transcended the boundaries of race. What stopped it from being one of those movies was it's "R" rating.Of course, the MPAA really isn't to blame on this one. For one, they could have eliminated all but one of the "F-words" (except perhaps for Vivica A. Fox telling Vanessa L. Williams, "You are getting on my F**king nerves". I thought that use of the F-word was appropriate enough given the context). For instance, I thought Williams' "f**k the family" rant, as much as her frustration was significant to that point in the film, could have been expressed using other words.Second, related to Williams' rant, was it necessary for Miles (Michael Beach) to back Faith (Gina Rivera) up against a wall and hump her with his buttocks completely exposed? That scene alone was probably the straw that broke the camels back. The scene could have been just as effective, not to mention tense, if Miles was passionately kissing Faith. The scene that instead remains a permanent fixture in this movie borders on soft core porn. I'm not saying this because I'm a moralist. I'm saying this because this film really would have been a bigger hit if it was not rated R.Otherwise, the film was great. The acting was top notch, and the story line was very intriguing. I'm predicting that this film will turn out to be the black "It's A Wonderful Life". By that, I mean that like the Frank Capra classic, it will gain much more of a following in the next decade or two. We shall see.

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

I think Soul Food does more than reveal a truly selfish brood of sisters (Williams, Fox, Long). Through the eyes of a child, it looks at family and blood values and finds them strong enough to beat any adversity. These are real people with real problems (unemployment, depression, desires, frustrations, goals and greed), there is no logic in those situations. You work with the essentials and learn as you go along. The sisters learn to accept each other's kinks and twists, even if it means swallowing their pride. This truly is food for the soul.A searching movie!!!

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.