Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

‘Jumping the Broom’ delivers heart, smarts

Loretta Devine, left, and Angela Bassett in “Jumping the Broom.”
Roger Moore Orlando Sentinel

“Jumping the Broom” is like a Tyler Perry movie with polish.

An ensemble comedy about a wedding that joins a wealthy family of African-American professionals with the groom’s more down-to-Earth working-class Brooklynites, it is well-cast, well-played, passably written and filmed in the warm glow only top-drawer cinematographers can achieve.

And if this T.D. Jakes project (the Dallas-based preacher produced it) lacks the scruffy, hit-or-miss outrageousness of Perry’s down-home farces, it compensates with heart, smarts and a confident air that Perry’s pictures lack.

Paula Patton (“Precious”) shaves off a few years playing Sabrina, an excitable young woman of privilege who prays for a “good man” and promptly hits one: Jason (Laz Alonzo). Literally. With her car.

They date, and when it looks as if she’s about to move to China for a job assignment, he proposes. A wedding at her house on Martha’s Vineyard is arranged.

But Jason hasn’t brought Sabrina to meet his mom. And Pam (Loretta Devine) is fuming over that. She keeps score of all the slights she collects (“That’s strike one!”) from Sabrina and the bride’s highfalutin mother (Angela Bassett), who switches to French when she wants to say something nasty about the new in-laws.

The families fight over everything from clothes to the menu to “Jumping the Broom,” a fading wedding tradition dating from slave times.

Mike Epps and DeRay Davis play the groom’s fish-out-of-water cousins, wise-crackers overwhelmed by all the wealth.

There’s an earnest, white wedding planner (Julie Bowen) who serves as a surrogate for the nonblack viewer. The character is something of a cliché in black sitcoms, but Bowen makes her work, constantly tossing off overly familiar slang (“Girrrrrl …”) and asking inappropriate questions about hair weaves, skin shadings and chicken as a dinner staple.

Virtually everybody in this film directed by TV veteran Salim Akil has been a member of Tyler Perry’s ensemble company, but here, they don’t force the laughs.

Pairing off Devine and Bassett, two good actresses who rarely get to play straight comedy, pays off. Their confrontations are class warfare, with each scoring her hits.

There’s a touch of religion and plenty of melodrama, especially in the contrivances of a cluttered and drawn-out third act. But as traditional as it is, “Jumping the Broom” throws a few nice twists into its situation and the players deliver.

There’s no man in a Madea dress in this one, and you don’t miss her.