Warner Premiere's Preacher's Kid (this Tuesday, 4 May) is an interesting look inside gospel theater and African American churchgoing culture for those unfamiliar with either. Unlike most faith-based features, it eschews an overly-simplistic, reverent-to-a-fault tone toward "the church life". This is despite the fact that the movie was clearly heavily-influenced by the parable of the Prodigal Son. I'm not certain the behind the scenes story of gospel theater has been told at all until now, and PK does it quite well indeed.
PK stars LeToya Luckett as Angie, the titular 21-year-old Preacher's Kid who lives at home to take care of her preacher dad after her mother's death. She has the voice of an angel and is devoted to her religion, but the Great Temptation of show business draws her away from the safety of home. Luckett was one of the original members of Destiny's Child who was unceremoniously dumped from the group by Beyonce's dad-manager.
A touring gospel theater show called Daddy Can I Come Back Home? comes to town and the bad boy star gets his hooks into her. The name of and nature of the show-within-the-show is a bit on the nose, but if anything, the movie stands fine on its own for its primary audience (black gospel churchgoers) just as much as it is an accessible look at this culture to outsiders. Then again, who knows if white folk will dare pick this up in the video store, preferring instead to queue it through the anonymity of Netflix.
I'm not black, nor was I a regular churchgoer in my youth, but I had a lot of exposure to this world when I was younger. I don't share the abject hatred of Tyler Perry films like the sea of pale-skinned male movie bloggers that overwhelm the press sections at screenings across the country. The corrupted-by-showbiz story in movies is as old as talkies, and this is a really solid reworking of the theme.
What will probably surprise white people more than the sheer number of black people on screen is the amount of physical and psychological violence perpetrated on the heroine by the man who injects a healthy amount of Stockholm Syndrome into his relationship with Angie.
I was glad to find Gregalan Williams in PK as Angie's preacher pop and likewise Ella Joyce as the enthusiastic church patron with more than a passing romantic interest in the widower preacher. Williams does a great deal of TV work and appeared briefly in Olver Stone's W. as an evangelical preacher. Joyce is best remembered by the geek set as the Nurse with the cream in Bubba Ho-Tep. She's a woefully under-used actress with loads of talent, and like Williams, I wish we got to see more of her.
The entire supporting cast is very strong and convincing. It's not often that someone credited as a character named "Biscuit" steals the show, but Carlos Davis really knocks it out of the park as the bus driver who takes on the role of a Madea-alike auntie in the show. He really makes the most of every minute he's given. In all seriousness, I would gladly watch an 85-minute feature about the long-suffering Biscuit the Bus Driver. I would watch this guy headline anything, he's overfull with charisma.
The sense of exaggeration and intentional self-parody found in gospel theater only extends to the drama of the movie in a limited sense, with respect to the show-within-the-show echoing Angie's journey. Of course, jumping to the other side of the racial divide, how much did that hurt Moulin Rouge?
Even with a plot template that has been re-used more than the Hero With a Thousand Faces "warrior-quest" story theorized by Joseph Campbell, Preacher's Kid manages to stand out. The energy and sense of jubilation existent in black churches is quite simply unparalleled, and PK taps this energy effectively and accessibly. If you aren't into this kind of story, then you're not into what this movie has to offer, plain and simple. Racial identification and religious similarity aren't required, I should note. The protagonist is who she is, but people with other beliefs and motivations are judged by the filmmaker only in their selfish versus selfless interests.
The Blu-ray includes four featurettes and some additional footage, with a DVD/Digital Copy disc as well. The DVD-only edition has the additional footage and that's it. The Blu-ray is a bit steep at $26.99 over on Amazon.