PREACHERS KID

I love this movie! Stan Foster is born as a filmmaker. "ThePreacher's Kid" is filmmaking at its best - well written, well directed, and the performances are top notch. It touches your heart,breaks your heart and puts it back together again. A new American classic is born."
-Robert Townsend
Director Hollywood Shuffle, The Five Heartbeats.

Easily the best Christian drama since "Fireproof."
-Roger Moore
Orlando Sentinel

 

Foster's film confirms the unique, undeniable power this genre can achieve on both stage and film--best exemplified by a scene climactic to both the movie and the play-within-a-movie, where Angie's song soars with such sincere, soul-baring passion that the audience, religious or otherwise, is uplifted beyond the screen and to a place that is genuinely transcendent.
- Michael Dequina
TheMovieReport.com

 

Crowd-pleasing, heartfelt and inspirational. It's a wonderful, uplifting, and life-affirming movie.
- Avi Offer
NYC Movie Guru

 

The acting varies from fine to excellent, the script is well structured, and the third act soars to an emotional high with very clever writing and crowd-pleasing acting flourishes. Even better, the music by Tim Miner is worthy of producing a couple crossover hits, and the singing by the cast is just as good as almost everything you will hear in NINE or DREAMGIRLS. LeToya Luckett is a real star in the making.
- Movie Guide

The Devlin Is A Liar in ‘Preacher’s Kid’
Posted on 05/07/2010 by Harry Thomas

Guest review by Tunette M. Powell

Oh, I know that’s right. No hidden secrets here, writer and director Stan Foster wants his audience to know that “Preacher’s Kid” is a Christian film. From his cliché title “Preacher’s Kid” to the name of the characters, Bishop King, Angie and Devlin, we get idea that the movie will be about God, an angel and the devil. But don’t get it twisted, unlike most Christian movies I’ve seen, “Preacher’s Kid” delivers and offers deliverance. Tyler Perry, the writer and director widely known for his Christian plays and movies, could learn a thing or two from Stan Foster.

Synopsis with my two cents:

Preacher’s Kid sticks to the script. The Biblical Script(ure), that is. This film brings the biblical parable of the prodigal son to life. In the Bible, Jesus tells the story of the property owner who had two sons. The younger of the two sons said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.” And so the father did. The son took his inheritance and fled from his father’s home. He spent everything he had and became impoverished. He was sent to the fields to feed pigs – one of the lowest jobs available in that time. While in the fields, starving and poor, the son realized that he had things better back at home. And so he returned home.

Writer Stan Foster brings this parable to life in the form of Angie King (R&B singer LeToya Luckett); a small-town girl living with her father, a typical Baptist preacher, in Augusta, Georgia. Angie, with hopes of becoming a singer, flees from her small town to tour with a traveling gospel show. Like the prodigal son, she finds life hard away from home as she’s lured into a relationship with the star of the gospel show, Devlin Mitchell (R&B singer Durell “Tank” Babbs) – a man that physically and verbally abuses her and lives by a “praise them early, dog them later” concept.

 

Woman Thou Art Loosed
By TODD MCCARTHY - Variety

A Rueben Cannon Production presented in association with Touch Down Prods. Produced by Cannon. Executive producer, Stan Foster. Co-producers, Tammy Garnes, Will Griffin. Directed by Michael Schultz. Screenplay, Stan Foster, based on the book and play by Bishop T.D. Jakes.

Michelle Jordan - Kimberly Elise Cassie - Loretta Devine Twana - Debbi Morgan Todd - Michael Boatman Reggie - Clifton Powell Nicole - Isalis DeLeon Pervis - Sean Blakemore Eli - Ricky Harris Bishop T.D. Jakes - Himself

A young woman's ordeal with a legacy of rape, abuse, poverty, drug addiction and prostitution is bluntly conveyed in "Woman Thou Art Loosed." Frankly religious and therapeutically intended but confrontational and stylistically unvarnished, indie production is notable for Kimberly Elise's ferocious lead performance and for the bigscreen exposure pic affords the charismatic Bishop T.D. Jakes, who plays himself and upon whose works the film is based. Considering Jakes' wide following, pic should find a sizeable built-in audience among the church-affiliated Christian public, and to a certain extent beyond that in the black community, before moving on to a sturdy run in homevid. Opening with the startling scene of a woman making her way to the front of a giant religious revival conducted by Jakes and firing several shots with unseen results, Stan Foster's screenplay recounts the downward spiral of Michelle Jordan's (Elise) life and her halting efforts to reclaim it when the pastor wins her a furlough from prison on condition she attend one of his three-day revivals.

The trouble began when Michelle's single mom Cassie (Loretta Devine) took in a new boyfriend when the girl was 8. It's obvious from the outset the penniless "Uncle" Reggie (Clifton Powell) is an unsavory hustler, preying on the vulnerabilities of an overly eager overweight woman and making unseemly remarks to Michelle about how foxy she'll shortly become.

While flashbacks build up to Michelle's tragically inevitable violation by Reggie when she's 12, followed by Cassie's lifelong denial that such a thing could have happened, present-day material sees Michelle checking into a halfway house instead of returning to her mother, who still lives with Reggie.

Attending the revival during the day, Michelle, now a hard-bitten woman, otherwise catches up with an old friend and stripper (Isalis DeLeon), is doted upon by the mild-manner fellow who loved her as a teen (Michael Boatman), is threatened for money by a former pimp (Sean Blakemore) and receives advice and a makeover from lively hairstylist (Debbi Morgan).

A hard case if there ever was one, Michelle has been to hell, but hasn't come back. As the onion peel of character revelation is stripped away, the pain initiated by Reggie and fostered by her unbelieving mother is seen to have led Michelle to total self-abnegation as a crack-addicted hooker. When Jakes tells her, "It's never too late," Michelle stonily replies, "It is for me."

The way the climactic public shooting scene plays out when fully dramatized at the end, salvation doesn't come in the predictably sappy, all-forgiving way; Michelle really is too far gone for that, and it makes this a more sobering and credible experience than most other modern "inspirational" films. On the other hand, although pic is well-acted, Michael Schultz's direction is as straightforward as a self-help manual, lacking the nuances that would give "Woman Thou Art Loosed" distinction beyond its content.

The flavorful revival scenes, covered with mobile cameras that make them part of the film's fabric, strongly convey the stature and persuasiveness of the Dallas-based Jakes, whose Time magazine-heralded status as the possible "next Billy Graham" is duly noted early on. The preacher also registers strongly in the more intimate moments of the prison sequences, leaving little doubt this is a man capable of changing lives and leading a flock.

But the film still belongs to Elise, familiar from such pics as "Beloved" and "John Q," but never afforded the opportunities she has here. Her Michelle has a chip on her shoulder that's fossilized; due to the endlessly bad hand life has dealt her, she is incapable of humor or lightness, although she gradually opens up to the preacher in ways that indicate there could be a smidgen of hope left, despite her protests to the contrary. Elise socks over her characterization, putting the woman's damaged soul, frustration and bitterness up on the screen.

Devine, Powell, Morgan and Boatman bring their characters nicely to life, even if only in one dimension as dictated by the script. Tech credits are just fair. Arch and unresonant title might advisably be change

 
 
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