This Weekend: Role Models, Soul Men, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Soul Men [watch the trailer]
The late greats Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes left us with a great comedy to remember them by. Mac and Samuel L. Jackson star in Malcolm D. Lee’s Soul Men, a comedy about two R&B singers called The Real Deal who haven’t performed in 30 years, and VH-1 wants them to reunite. Trouble is, they had a pretty severe falling out, and it’s going to take a hell of a lot of trials and a hell of a lot of tribulations to get them back on stage and in fine form. Director Lee got hit hard when his star Mac died in the same weekend as Hayes, who has a cameo role in the film, and he spoke openly about it. The fact that Bernie’s gone gives the film a weight and heart that might not have otherwise been there, given the themes of getting old and staring down death.

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Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa [watch the trailer]
Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett-Smith, David Schwimmer, Sacha Baron Cohen, Andy Richter and Cedric the Entertainer are all lending their voices to the sequel to the animated hit Madagascar. In the first film, a quartet of spoiled animals from the Central Park Zoo - Alex the Lion (Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Rock), Melman the Giraffe (Schwimmer) and Gloria the Hippopotamus (Pinkett-Smith) along with a kooky cabal of penguins - find themselves inadvertently transplanted to the island of Madagascar surrounded by lemurs, and life out of captivity is one heck of an adjustment. In this one, the gang finally has a plan to make their way back to New York, in a plane to be piloted by those precocious penguins. Of course, the best laid plans of zebras and giraffes often go awry, and the plane winds up crash landing in the wilds of Africa, leading them back to the homelands to truly discover their roots. It’s a treat to hear Bernie Mac voicing Alex the Lion’s long-lost father as well.

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Role Models [watch the trailer]
f you haven’t seen David Wain’s Wet Hot American Summer, you should have by now, if only to see Christopher Meloni at his insane best. You’ll also then understand why you should check out his re-teaming him with Paul Rudd. Of course, the new project might look a bit more mainstream than the quirky 80s summer camp parody, but since the current comedy movie climate is mostly about taking mainstream concepts and making them better than they usually are, a movie about guys bonding with troubled kids and learning how to be men can be a lot more fun than one might expect. Rudd plays Danny, a surly energy-drink pitchman who hates his job and everything else, while his partner Wheeler (Seann William Scott) is, well, free-wheeling and generally loves everything, including dressing up like a minotaur to sell sugar-water. When Johnny Law strings the pair up for some vandalism charges, Danny’s ex (Elizabeth Banks) gets them community service instead - meaning they have to act as Big Brothers for a couple of ne’er-do-well kids. Danny is paired up with a nerdy fantasy-loving McLovin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, proving he can get work beyond Superbad) while Wheeler gets the impossible brat Zak (Tajh Bellow). They hate it at first, but grow to not hate it so much. A trite story in the wrong hands, sure, but it’s most certainly in the right hands.