DVD Movie Rating for: Soul Food - Vanessa L. Williams, Vivica A. Fox

3 out of 5 stars

Movie Plot of: Soul Food - Vanessa L. Williams, Vivica A. Fox

Matriarch Mama Joe has held her family together for 40 years around a Sunday dinner of soul food. When diabetes hospitalizes her, the dinners stop and tensions among her three daughters start to break the family apart. Two of the sisters feud continuously: Teri is jealous of Maxine's marriage and irritated that everyone assumes her corporate salary is open to the rest of the family's uses. Maxine resents Teri's bossiness and insensitivity to family tradition. Bird, the youngest, newly married to an ex-con, accepts a favor from an old lover that leads to her husband's arrest. Mama Joe's grandson Ahmad cooks up a scheme to bring the family together, back to the table

DVD Production Details of: Soul Food - Vanessa L. Williams, Vivica A. Fox

Starring: Vanessa L. Williams, Vivica A. Fox

Director: George Tillman Jr.

Format: Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby

Studio: Twentieth Century Fox

DVD Release Date: January 22, 2002
DVD Features:
Commentary by director George Tillman, Jr.

Theatrical trailer(s)

Excerpts from the Soul Food cookbook

Widescreen anamorphic format

DVD Easter Eggs

Cast of the movie: Soul Food - Vanessa L. Williams, Vivica A. Fox

• Vanessa L. Williams.... Teri
• Vivica A. Fox .... Maxine, Ahmad's Mother
• Nia Long .... Bird
• Michael Beach .... Miles
• Mekhi Phifer .... Lem
• Brandon Hammond .... Joseph Ahmad/Narrator
• Jeffrey D. Sams .... Kenny
• Gina Ravera .... Faith
• Irma P. Hall .... Mother Joe a.k.a. Big Mama
• Carl Wright .... Reverend Williams
• Mel Jackson .... Simuel St. James
• Morgan Méchelle Smith .... Kelly
• John M. Watson Sr. .... Uncle Pete
• M.T. Alexander .... Jada
• Lawrence Petty .... Harome

Photo Gallery of the movie: Soul Food - Vanessa L. Williams, Vivica A. Fox

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Reviews of the movie: Soul Food - Vanessa L. Williams, Vivica A. Fox

Low-budget production, and it's got a quality of warmth and charm that fits perfectly with its authentic drama about a large African-American family in Chicago. Twenty-eight-year-old writer-director George Tillman Jr. drew autobiographical inspiration from his upbringing in Milwaukee, and on a well-spent $6.5 million budget he succeeded where similar films (including Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back) fell short: He depicts his many characters with such depth and sympathy that, by the time they have weathered several family crises, we've come to care and feel for them and the powerful ties that bind them together. As seen through the eyes of Tillman's young alter ego Ahmad (Brandon Hammond), the film primarily focuses on the rivalries and affections that rise and fall among Ahmad's mother (Vivica A. Fox) and her two sisters (Vanessa L. Williams, Nia Long). Through them, and through the weekly Sunday dinners cooked with love by their mother, Big Mama (Irma P. Hall), we witness marital bliss and distress, infidelity, success, failure... in short, the spices of life both bitter and sweet. But when Big Mama falls into a diabetic coma, Ahmad watches as his family begins to fall apart without the stability and love that Big Mama provided with every Sunday meal.

Tillman's touch can be overly nostalgic, melodramatic, and cloyingly sentimental, but never so much that the movie loses its firm grip on reality. As a universal portrait of family life, Soul Food ranks among the very best films of its kind--believable, funny, emotional, and always approaching its characters (well-played by a uniformly excellent cast) with a generous spirit of forgiveness and understanding. As satisfying as one of Big Mama's delicious dinners, Soul Food is the kind of movie that keeps you coming back for more

Superb Movie!
This movie is fantastic! The acting is first-rate (especially Vivica A. Fox and Brandon Hammond). The storyline is touching, funny, and poignant. This film wisely avoids being a "chick flick" and tells about a regular middle-class African-American family, something we don't see in movies that often.