In the 30 years following the break-up of Memphis-bred soul trio the Real Deal, singers Louis Hinds (Samuel L. Jackson) and Floyd Henderson (Bernie Mac) watched their former front man Marcus Hooks (John Legend) go successfully solo while their own thornier paths strayed out of music altogether and into jail time and the car wash business respectively. It’s only with the news of Hooks’ untimely demise that Louis and Floyd, both of them now residing on the West Coast, are given an opportunity to reunite for a posthumous tribute at the Apollo—should they be able to squeeze into the old satin outfits, patch up old grudges, keep Floyd’s green El Dorado running, get in a little on-stage rehearsal on the motel circuit, get busy with a few hungry women, and still make the gig on time.
Scripted by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone, Soul Men is a comic road movie that brakes for all the usual clichés. As helmed by Malcolm D. Lee (Undercover Brother), it is from start to finish a little too comfortable, too willing to settle for mechanical gags and wrote mediocrity, and it isn’t hard to imagine a more imaginative, rigorous director taking the same material, however meager, and injecting a little more urgency and emotional truth into its realization. Fortunately, what heart and soul there is to be found in Soul Men is frequently left to its stars to conjure, and there are some enjoyable, genuinely sweet scenes that feature Jackson and Mac chewing each other out, beating each other up, and even lighting some little spark of the old magic. This is finally a movie of largely verbal pleasures, whether arising from Mac’s whispery rants, blubbery coos or surprisingly fine falsetto or from Jackson’s imposing boasts, his casual citations of Lao Tzu, or that soul rap he does in the final big number. The music they make isn't much to get excited about, but the enthusiasm goes some distance.
Admittedly, it’s not without some sentimental bias that I managed to find a few high points in Soul Men, as in recent months we lost not only Mac, only 50, and undoubtedly with better movies ahead, but also the one and only Isaac Hayes, who has a small but stately cameo here. There is a definite lack of death’s shadow in this story of aging showmen trying to taste some fleeting hint of past glories, and that lack is one of the things that make the jokes and contrived reversals less involving. But, watching it so soon after Mac and Ike’s deaths, some flickering melancholy strikes certain moments from beyond the movie’s immediate frame, allowing us to savour another glimpse of these talented artists as they give a little extra class to these shopworn goods.
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