soul food

Director: george tillman jr.

Actor: vanessa williams,vivica a. fox,nia long,michael beach

Data Published: Fri Sep 26 1997

Genres: Comedy,Drama

Key Words: loss of grandmother,sister,1990s,food in title,family relationships

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120169/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_Food_(film)

Description: Soul Food is a movie starring Vanessa Williams, Vivica A. Fox, and Nia Long. One person can keep a family together and, when that one person is gone, a family can be torn apart.

Plot: Soul Food is told through the eyes of 11-year-old Ahmad (Hammond), following the trials of the Joseph family, a close-knit Chicago family that gets together to have Sunday dinner every week, with plenty of soul food to go around. Mother (Big Mama) Joe (Hall) has three daughters, who each have had varying success in life: oldest daughter Teri (Williams) has become a successful lawyer, but has a strained relationship with younger sister Maxine (Fox) who stole and eventually married Teri's former boyfriend, Kenny (Sams). Teri is currently married to Miles (Beach), a lawyer who quit his job to pursue his dream of being an R&B musician, which Teri doesn't support. Youngest daughter Robin (Long)—nicknamed "Bird"—has just opened a barbershop/beauty parlor and is married to Lem (Phifer), an ex-convict. Life becomes complicated when Mother Joe, the diabetic but wise and caring matriarch of the family and the glue that holds it together, suffers a debilitating stroke during an operation to amputate her leg. She slips into a coma, dying shortly after sharing a last word of advice with Ahmad when she awakens five weeks later. Without her guidance, the family begins to fall apart. Teri takes in her troubled cousin Faith (Ravera), who bonds with Miles over a love of the arts. The two have an affair and are caught having sex by Teri, which later leads to a near-violent confrontation at Kenny and Maxine's 11th wedding anniversary party when she furiously comes after the two with a butcher knife. Meanwhile, Lem cannot find a job due to his criminal record, so Bird makes an uneasy deal with her former boyfriend, Simuel St. James (Mel Jackson), to get Lem a job. This creates tension between Lem and Bird when he finds out and in one of their arguments, Teri overhears and mistakenly believes Lem was physically threatening her sister, to which Teri hires her cousin Blimp to teach Lem a lesson. However, when the two men get into a fight that ends with Lem pulling out a gun, the police become involved. This results in Lem being arrested on two crimes: assault and unlawful weapon possession charges. Realizing her mistake, Teri calls in a few favors to have Lem released and she apologizes to Lem. By contrast, Kenny and Maxine's relationship remains stable and they have their third child at the start of the film. However, they constantly call on Teri to pay for things for the family without paying the money back, which causes even more tension between the two oldest sisters. Ahmad, Kenny and Maxine's oldest child, becomes worried about the state of his extended family and conspires to find a way to bring them all back together by telling his relatives about a stash of money that Big Mama had hidden away some time ago, but everyone dismisses him, believing it to be a myth. However, Ahmad manages to get everyone together for another Sunday dinner by promising them the whereabouts of the money. The dinner is uneasy as everyone starts to confront their issues and soon enough, thanks to Miles mentioning something about the money, they realize there is no money. Maxine chastises her son for lying, but Ahmad says tearfully that it was the only way to get everyone back together again, citing it was Joe's dying wish. As Maxine is comforting her son, the kitchen accidentally catches on fire due to Ahmad leaving a towel too close to the burner and they all work together to try and to put it out. When they put the fire out, Uncle Pete(John M. Watson Sr.), Big Mama's brother who hadn't left his room in what Ahmad says is "something like ten years now," comes down with his television and drops it to reveal the money that Big Mama had hidden away. Things start to go well for the family. Miles still comes by for Sunday dinner even though he and Teri are divorcing, Teri has also decided not to sell her mother's house, Lem and Bird are expecting their first child, Faith is finally becoming part of the family again and Uncle Pete starts to join the family.