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Don't Trip... He Ain't Through With Me Yet!: Review

DON'T TRIP... HE AIN'T THROUGH WITH ME YET!
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Originally planned as a direct-to-DVD release but subsequently given a limited theatrical release, this short — 78 minutes — concert film features comedian Steve Harvey working a crowd of 16,000 churchgoers at the 2004 edition of MegaFest, the Reverent T.D. Jakes' giant, Atlanta-based gospel gathering. The "He" of the title is God Himself. Harvey, whose notoriously profane brand of observational humor made him one of the Original Kings of Comedy (along with D.L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer and Bernie Mac), pleads with his audience to cut him some slack as he attempts, after "standin' on stage for 20 years cussin'," to get through his set without swearing, cussing or making un-Christian remarks, because he's still a work in progress. Harvey's canny, self-congratulatory bluster alternates between professions of faith — his God-fearing mother taught him that "if you ain't got God, you ain't got nothin'" — and confessions of imperfection: Harvey admits to impure thoughts about foxy gospel star Yolanda Adams and demonstrates an insider's knowledge of the price of Victoria's Secret panties. But really, folks, he's not so bad. After all, as Harvey declares with a wink, "If Christians ain't sexy, where are all these little Christians coming from?" Though working clean doesn't inherently equal working bland, Harvey's PG-rated material is a hit-or-miss affair. His extended examination of Michael Jackson's eccentricities, for example, starts out on a deceptively low-key note, then works up to an incisively indignant crescendo. But Harvey's attenuated riff on the foibles of churchgoers — wild kids disrupting Bible class, the disruptive comings and goings of large, weak-bladdered congregants, choir-robe wardrobe malfunctions, trivial testifying (getting a refund at Payless, he declares, does not constitute proof of God's miraculous intervention — especially when you have your receipt), and Communion-wafer connoisseurs who finger all the goods looking for a plus-size piece — is standard stuff, occasionally funny but mostly a rehash of hoary gags about fat people, bad manners and the sorry results of spare-the-rod child-rearing. Harvey ends with a calculated crowd-pleaser, imagining himself as an emcee called upon to ballyhoo the man who needs no introduction: Je-sus, which gets the crowd on its feet just as he makes his well-timed exit. Sure, some find such foot-stomping razzle-dazzle impious. But as Harvey would no doubt counter, if a little showbiz puts behinds in the seats of God's house, where's the harm? leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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