First Sunday

Durell (ICE CUBE) and LeeJohn (TRACY MORGAN) are best friends and bumbling petty criminals. When told they have one week to pay a $17,000 debt or Durell will lose his son, they come up with a desperate scheme to rob their neighborhood church. Instead, they end up spending the night in the presence of the Lord and are forced to deal with much more than they bargained for.

The all-star cast also includes Katt Williams as Rickey, the flamboyant church choir-director, Chi McBride as the Pastor, Malinda Williams as his outspoken daughter and Regina Hall as the mother of Durell's son.

******

It’s a steamy summer day in inner-city Baltimore when Durell Washington (Ice Cube) learns that his son’s mother (Regina Hall) plans to take Durell Jr. to Atlanta to live—unless Durell can come up with $17,000 to help her keep her hair salon afloat. A dedicated if chronically underemployed dad, Durell has spent years trying to give his son a better chance at life than he had. He has walked the boy to the school bus each morning, tried to turn his gift for tinkering into a job and resisted the harebrained criminal schemes of his lifelong friend LeeJohn Jackson (Tracy Morgan).

But after another frustrating day of job hunting, Durell’s desperation overcomes his common sense and he agrees to help LeeJohn deliver a truckload of stolen wheelchairs for a local thug. The job ends in chaos when LeeJohn panics and leads the police on a wild car chase through the city. Sentenced to 5,000 hours of community service by an irate judge (Keith David), Durell is deeper in debt than ever when their erstwhile employer demands $12,000 for the lost wheelchairs—or else. Almost $30,000 in the red, the pair seems to be out of options until LeeJohn convinces his pal to go along with another one of his goofball capers: This time, all they have to do is rob their local neighborhood church.

The would-be bandits break in intending to crack the safe and get out fast. Instead, they stumble onto a church meeting in progress and discover the First Sunday collection money is already missing. Seeing no way back, Durell finds himself holding a room full of indignant church folk hostage.

As the night wears on and the temperature in the sanctuary rises, long simmering feuds among the church leaders begin to boil over. Pastor Mitchell (Chi McBride) does his best to referee a heated dispute between his beautiful and fiery daughter Tianna (Malinda Williams) and smooth talking Deacon Randy (Michael Beach) over the best use for the money. Sweet church secretary Sister Doris (Loretta Devine) reaches out to LeeJohn and makes him understand the error of his ways.  All the while, flamboyant choir director Rickey (Katt Williams) tries to ignore the ruckus and proceed with his choir practice. 

Before the evening is over, the money will turn up, the thief will be revealed and Durell and LeeJohn will come away with something more important than money.