"Dirty Laundry": A Gay Black Prodigal Son Returns and Most Everyone Learns to Get Along with Eachother

Although it was not a made-for-tv movie or a tv series pilot, the feel-good 2006 movie written, directed, and produced by Maurice Jamal (who also plays the brother of the narrator/protagonist) about a gay black writer Sheldon (Rockmond Dunbar - Soul Food) who has achieved some success in NYC returning to rural Georgia and the overbearing mother (Loretta Devine) whom he fled is so lacking in edge that it seems aimed at tv. Not quite everyone ends up with a greater appreciation of everyone else. The pompous and overbearing sister, Lettuce (Jenifer Lewis) gets taken down a peg or two by the sister to whom she has condescended.

But the cute ten-year-old (Aaron Shaw) acquires parents (both male), the sister is literally going to take flight, the matriarch accepts her children and their aspirations, Sheldon comes out to the whole church, and his white boyfriend Ryan (Joey Costello) is not only accepted by Mama, but coaches Sheldon's pudgy niece (Rainey Matthews) when she has been discouraged.

Other than a lengthy ego duel in the Ebeneezer Baptist Church, I was bored (and somewhat confused) by the first half hour of the movie. It would have been better to begin at the beginning, but the NYC segment that shows how/why Sheldon returned is a flashback quite a ways into the movie (and fairly amusing).

As the chain-smoking laundress (of course, the title is a pun on her means of making a living, and revealing family secrets outside the family), Devine is entertaining, though not as sardonic as the black matriarch on "Weeds" played by Tonye Patano.

Visually, the movie is undistinguished and looks, well, made-for-tv. The movie appeals to be liked while pleaing for acceptance all around. The gay son is accepted with hardly a murmur by family members of all ages, including Lettuce's husband and sons by earlier marriages. The conflict is mostly internal to Sheldon, disbelieving that his two worlds (Ryan and Mama) can be brought together in comity, or that he can take over fathering a son, or regain his aspiration to write The Great American Novel rather than glossy magazine fishwrap. Dunbar grimaces a lot and otherwise looks pained and/or puzzled.

Devine and Lewis get to act out. They have and provide more fun than their offspring do. Not quite enough, but almost! It would be as hard to strongly dislike the movie as it would to passionately love it.

***

Today is African American day in my June gay now and then, here and there AC posting blitz.