Product Description

Sunday dinner at Mothers Joe's (Irma P. Hall) is a mouth watering, 40 year tradition. As seen through the eyes of her grandson Ahmad (Brandon Hammond), love and laughs are always on the menu, despite the usual rivalries simmering between his mom Maxine and her sisters Teri an bird. But when serious bickering starts to tear the family apart, the good times suddenly stop. Now it's up to Ahmad to get everyone back together and teach them the true meaning of soul food.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25264 in DVD
• Brand: Twentieth Century Fox
• Released on: 2001-04-03
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Color, Director's Cut, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 114 minutes

Amazon.com
Soul Food is the kind of movie that seems to have been blessed throughout its 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. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

An American Family Story
I went to see this movie with an African American friend. When he told me about the movie I figured I might not be able to relate, because it was about an African American family. And, in this society we all sometimes get caught up in our differences as opposed to what makes us so much alike. By the end of this movie, I felt like I had just seen the best family movie that I had ever seen. Regardless of the ethnic make-up of the family. Soul Food as certainly more than a movie about an African American family. It is a movie about strong family values and how those values are challenged by tragedy, jobs, deciet, miscommunication and betrayal. This movie depicts how a family can overcome all of those obstacles and maintain the most important value of them all... love for family.

As I further thought about what I had seen, I realized how rare we see movies of this nature featuring African Americans. I also realized how sad it is that most non-African Americans won't go to see this movie for that reason alone. If they only knew how much they missed.

In addition to being hungry following this movie, I also felt a warm spirit come over me. And, I also realized that black or white, family values are pretty much the same. Finally, I realized just how much I miss sitting down with my family over dinner. So, the following Sunday, my wife and I gathered our children, their grandparents and a few family friends and we had the best dinner I've experienced in a long time. We've now made this a tradition. Now if I and my wife can learn to cook the way they did in Soul Food....

LOVE IT !
I can watch this movie all day long.. this movie reminds me so much of my family when i was coming up the sunday dinners, just being around each other , the sibling riviarly i can most defintely relate to.. this a breath of fresh air from the normal hood type movies.. yes that is a part of life but it just a portion of life .. Good to see us as african american people seein an another light .. Hats off to Producers, Directors, Writers .. Love the soundtrack also !

Great insight into the joys and complications of family life
The family in this movie is head by "Big Mama" (don't even think about the recent Martin Lawrence farce "Big Momma's House"), a larger than life weathered woman who keeps the family going with her straight-shooting wisdom and hearty Sunday dinners. Vanessa Williams, who plays the oldest sister, is a wealthy attorney who constantly annoys her two sisters with her snobbery. She is involved in a crumbling marriage, which eventually turns adulterous. Vivica Fox plays the middle sister, a woman who is a devoted wife and mother. Nia Long plays the youngest sister, a newlywed to a small-time crook. Big Mama's death sends the family into a tailspin, all of a sudden the glue holding the sisters together is gone, and they have to laugh, cry, love, and fight their way into finding out how to hold it together themselves. Touching and so true.