The misunderstood talent of Cuba Gooding Jr.
The rap against all these performances is that Gooding's characters were too soft or weak, or at the very least, undignified, and that Gooding was too eager to please?that he seemed the kind of actor who was way too eager to debase himself for a laugh. Even Gooding's ramrod-straight, jut-jawed-hero performances in Men of Honor and Pearl Harbor couldn't erase the perception that he was a hopeless clown with bad taste in material?an African-American lead who didn't stack up with other black movie stars, past or present. Despite his fine, suffering heroism in Men of Honor?an historical drama about a black military hero who was unfortunately dominated by Robert De Niro's sneering redneck commander?some thought Gooding lacked the ennobling ambitions of Sidney Poitier and Denzel Washington, the broad-backed machismo of Wesley Snipes or the sarcastic menace of Samuel L. Jackson.
The Fighting Temptations doesn't just answer these criticisms, it exposes the faulty logic behind them. He's so appealing in this movie?and the nature of his appeal is so sweet and so basic?that it makes me think that all this time, he's been ahead of the cultural curve and those who ever doubted him (myself included) didn't understand what he was trying (sometimes unsuccessfully) to do.
Gooding has been judged by a dumb and perhaps insidious double standard, which holds that if black male actors don't restrict themselves to characters who are either noble or macho (preferably both), then they're somehow wimping out, or selling out. Based on this film and much of the rest of his filmography (including his superb slapstick performance in Rat Race), I now think Gooding was being compared to the wrong actors. Boyz N the Hood notwithstanding, he seems to have very little interest in pretending to be hard?perhaps less interest than any African-American movie star of his generation. He'd rather be interesting?meaning human-sized, vulnerable, small. He doesn't want to be Poitier or Washington; he wants to be Matthew Broderick or Jack Lemmon. In Temptations, he gets his wish.
Gooding is playing a culturally specific character?Darrin Hill, a black man raised by a single woman (gospel singer Faith Evans) who was kicked out of their church for singing R&B?the devil's music?and who eventually conned his way into a new identity as a New York corporate type. After opening flashbacks, the present-day story begins with Hill selling his ad agency on a new plan to market malt liquor (a sure sign of corruption in a movie like this), then being exposed as a scam artist whose entire resume is a pack of lies. (Hill's boss: "We cannot be represented by people who tell lies." Hill: "But we're in advertising.") After cleaning out his desk, Hill goes home to attend the funeral of his beloved aunt, whose will promises him $150,000 if he'll lead the local church choir to victory in a music contest.
This cornball setup is older than most American towns, but Lynn and company don't let on, and Gooding animates the movie with a lead performance that's consistently alert, sharp-witted and bristling with energy, yet contained, reactive. He rejects movie-star vanity and never tries to make Hill seem stronger or smarter than the story will accept. Much of the time, Gooding lets other people steal scenes, then steals them back with a subtle reaction. (Seeing two choir members swap a piece of gum via an open-mouthed kiss, he pauses, then mutters, "That was nasty.")
Throughout, Gooding takes his movie-star cues from Broderick, Lemmon and the consummate middle-American ringmaster, Johnny Carson, observing the constellation of oddballs circling around him. Their ranks include Latanya Richardson as a wannabe lead singer and church busybody; the great Wendell Pierce as the reverend who's under Richardson's thumb; Steve Harvey as a chain-smoking small-town DJ who keeps up an Altman-esque running commentary on the plot; veteran white character actor Mickey Jones as a hard-drinking organist; and Mike Epps as the town's self-styled player, Lucius, a motormouth who discourses on the geographical differences between ladies' posteriors. ("Louisiana booty gets its reknowned buoyancy from that seafood diet.") The choir's ringers include a barbershop trio (Darrell Vanterpool, Walter Williams. Sr. and Eric Nolan Grant) and three musically gifted felons (rapper T-Bone, Montell Jordan and Chris Cole) who are brought into the church in orange jumpsuits and shackles. Jordan's character is a glowering giant with a tousled 'fro that suggests the foamy tip of a microphone; when he opens his mouth, he sounds like Frankie Lymon.
Temptations isn't an especially original or stylish comedy; as written by Elizabeth Hunter and Saladin K. Patterson and directed by Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinny), it initially seems very much a machine-tooled Hollywood crowd-pleaser, stocked with all the rote elements you expect, including a central storyline about a flawed young man learning Life Lessons, a running battle between pious bluenoses and earthy free spirits, a contrived romance between the hero and an independent, honey-voiced single mom (Beyonce Knowles), a sentimental attitude toward small-town life and sight gags so basic they'd be at home in a silent movie. (While overseeing a mass baptism in a river, Hill is reminded that he was never baptised, and stubbornly refuses to be dunked; cut to Hill being dunked.)
Yet it also has tremendous, undeniably spontaneous energy; parts of it are more exciting than any action picture I've seen this year. Besides Evans and Knowles (a slightly clunky actress who commands the screen whenever she sings), the musical lineup includes Shirley Caesar, Ann Nesby, T-Bone, and Blind Boys of Alabama. Ace editor Paul Hirsch keeps the movie hopping from moment to moment and joke to joke, holding images just long enough to register and no longer?an old man dancing in the aisles, closeups of hands slapping tambourines and fingers gliding across keyboards, a reaction shot of congregation members which wordlessly reveals that they used to talk trash about Hill's late aunt. The script has a moral backbone, too; in its own corny, obvious way, Temptations has valid things to say about different kinds of hypocrisy (some acceptable, others dangerous), the struggle to be moral in an immoral world, the impossibility of moral perfection and the necessity of striving for it anyway. "I ain't good enough," the choir sings in the contest, "but He still loves me."