It sounded a bit creepy when news about the black comedy Driving Lessons first hit. The film was said to focus on "a troubled family who gets a second chance at happiness when the mother (Davis) suffers a memory loss and can't recall the last 15 years of her life." Now, as more cast sign on, it's sounding entirely different. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Max Thieriot (Nancy Drew), Bow Wow (The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift), Evan Ross (Life Support), Chi McBride (Boston Public), Gabrielle Anwar (The Tudors), Madeline Zima (Californiacation), Brittany Robertson (Dan in Real Life), Jermaine Williams (Stomp the Yard), and John Patrick Amedori (Stick It) have already signed on for parts, and that Selma Blair is in final negotiations.

As it's being described now, Bunnie (Hope Davis' mother character) is "given a second chance at her unhappy marriage to Jack (Dermot Mulroney) after losing her memory. It conveniently helps her to forget an interracial affair with her burly next-door neighbor Simon (McBride)." Go, Chi! Then, things get more weird -- Thieriot will play her "religious, right-wing teenage son," Robertson is the "sexually adventurous daughter," and Blair is finally beyond playing super-young girls and instead, she'll be "a sarcastic lesbian high school teacher having an affair with a student (Zima)." Anwar, meanwhile, will be "Jack's sexy, power-crazed co-worker," while Ross plays McBride's son, and Bow Wow and Williams will be meddlesome thugs. There's no word on Amedori's role. It's definitely a strange selection of random bits, and whether it'll all work together -- we'll have to wait and see. Production gears up next month in LA.

See the expression on Ice Cube's face in this photograph? I wore that same expression for the entire running time of First Sunday. The transition of the holiday movie season into the barren movie wasteland of January is always a jarring one. For the past three months, it seems like I've seen nothing but Oscar-caliber movies -- masterful films by outstanding filmmakers working from amazing scripts. So maybe First Sunday just pales in comparison...

But I don't think so.

No, this is not yet another sequel to that terrific Ice Cube comedy Friday, as many have suspected. Sunday tells the story of "new" characters Durell (Cube) and LeeJohn (Tracy Morgan). As the movie opens, the boys are picked up by the cops for their involvement with some stolen wheelchairs. They are sentenced to 5,000 hours of community service, the owner of the wheelchairs comes to collect, and Durell finds himself broke. Things get even more desperate when Durell's ex-girlfriend (Regina Hall) tells him she intends to move to another state with his son...unless he can come up with $17,000 to pay off a debt. So Durell and LeeJohn do what anyone in their shoes would do -- they decide to rob a church. And of course, after a night amongst good Christian folk, they learn that crime is bad and God is good and blah blah blah.

As I write this, The Brothers Solomon has a 15% rating with critics over at Rotten Tomatoes. Users (ie: average moviegoers), however, are scoring it at 75%. That's a pretty hefty margin, and so obviously people are finding something in Solomon that critics are missing. This sort of thing happens a lot throughout the year -- mostly with comedies -- and no one seems capable of placing a finger on exactly why critics and moviegoers are so far apart. Don't get me wrong, stupidity has a lot to do with it -- and The Brothers Solomon is a stupid movie. There's no questioning that. But is it funny? To a certain degree, yes, if you're a fan of movies like Dumb and Dumber and A Night at the Roxbury -- films that feature two moronic, yet seemingly happy-go-lucky characters who view the world from inside their own ultra-unrealistic bubble. And it's enough to keep you laughing for about twenty minutes, as that's about when the SNL-type shtick wears off and you're left holding (figuratively, not literally) onto Malin Akerman's ass in a wet bathing suit because it's the only part of the flick worth watching.

And I don't mean to be a perverted slime ball about it, but the scene in which Akerman struts out of a jacuzzi, half-naked, while Will Arnett crawls behind, licking her wet footsteps as the love song from Footloose (Almost Paradise for those keeping track) blares in the background is probably the most ridiculous -- and amusing -- of the entire film. Those moments are few and far between -- and they only work on those willing to lose themselves in the Solomon's alternate reality; a reality in which the outcome to every situation or dilemma is always positive, no matter how crummy it may seem on the surface. Take shit with a smile should be their motto, and perhaps there's a message there about how remaining in a constant positive state is the one true key to happiness. Then again, that's kind of creepy. And so are the Solomon brothers.

As much as I know you're hoping that First Sunday is some sort of extension of Ice Cube's Friday franchise, I'm sorry to say that it's not. Nope, this is an entirely different film -- although it appears as if Cube is finally putting aside those cheesy family-friendly comedies in order to take on a project that might actually be worth seeing. When we first brought you news on First Sunday, all we knew at the time was that Ice Cube was set to star as one half of a team of thieves who decide to rob a church. Playwright David E. Talbert, who's made a name for himself writing "gospel-tinged" plays for the past 15 years, boarded the pic as its writer-director.

Now, Variety reports that a host of other thesps have joined the party; they include Tracy Morgan (I imagine he'll be Cube's partner-in-crime), Katt Williams, Malinda Williams, Regina Hall, Chi McBride and Loretta Devine. Sony's fairly successful genre label Screen Gems will be shoveling out this masterpiece, and I have to give them credit for mixing it up as of late. They scored hits with Stomp the Yard and The Messengers, and although word on Vacancy wasn't all that bad, it didn't do as well at the box office as its siblings. Next on the agenda for Screen Gems will be Resident Evil: Extinction and This Christmas. As far as Ice Cube goes, there is a chance we'll see him team back up with Chris Tucker for another Friday flick (what would they call this one, The Friday After the Third Monday of the Month?), although I wouldn't count on that happening anytime soon. Well, not unless you have about $40 million to waste on a crappy Tucker performance.