Dirty Laundry

“This ain’t Soul Food and we ain’t the Cosbys,” declares laundress Evelyn (Devine), the chain-smoking, tough-loving, no-back-talk–taking matriarch of the squabbling blue-collar Davis family of Paris, Georgia. Devine’s performance is the heart and soul of this clichéd comedy of fractious family values, directed by Chapelle’s Show alumnus Maurice Jamal. The churchgoing Davises are about to be hit with a bombshell: Wayward son Sheldon (Dunbar), a big-city magazine writer, is gay. A bombshell awaits him, too: a ten-year-old son, the product of a barely remembered one-night stand. There’s more metaphorical dirty laundry to go around—plenty for everyone, but nothing tears and good food won’t fix