| By Fred Topel
In Theaters July 1
|
Martin Lawrence is not the first name you think of when it comes to family comedies. But then, neither is Ice Cube and believe it or not, there was a time when Eddie Murphy wasn’t either. So it’s not all that strange to see former Def Comedy Jam host Lawrence playing basketball with some middle schoolers in Rebound.
“Maybe people want to see us go against the grain and try something different that we haven’t done,” Lawrence said. “I don’t know.”
Turns out, it was his buddy Eddie Murphy that encouraged him to pursue the family audience. “When it came to my attention, I remember Eddie Murphy said to me, ‘You should do a movie with kids. You and kids together are just very funny.’ Then this Rebound script came along and I was really interested in it. So we tried to get it set up a number of places and wound up finding a home for it. I wanted to do it just because I felt like it would be a lot of fun for me. And it’s something that I haven’t had an opportunity to do.”
Even though the likes of hardcore rapper Ice Cube have recently courted the PG rating, with much success, Lawrence does not think this is a particularly lucrative time for the trend.
“When they’re funny and they’re fun and they’re good movies to do, [it doesn’t] matter who stars in them. I just think there are scripts that, I know for me, happen to come past my desk and if I read it and find that it’s funny, it’s something I want to do.”
Lawrence plays Coach Roy, a college basketball diva who gets kicked out of the league for his technical fouls. As a PR stunt, he coaches his old high school team, now full of riff raff who don’t even know practice drills.
Working with tweens and teens did give Lawrence a professional challenge he had not anticipated. “If I’m doing a scene with Danny DeVito or Will, I can pull them to the side and I can get into adult humor with them. I can talk about certain things. With kids, you’ve got to be mindful of that. You don’t want to be acting a certain way around them because kids don’t understand, so you just want to be cautious with that.”
Ultimately, Lawrence found he did not need to rely on the adult humor to get through scenes. “[It] doesn’t affect it at all because I’m in the scene. I know what I’m doing. It’s not like I’m in there and I need a cuss word as a crutch to help me get through.”
In another effort to cater to the younger crowd, Lawrence’s on screen romance was toned down compared to his other films. This again taught him another way to handle the conventions of movies. “It was a smart way to do it because it shows you can have romance in many other ways and get your point across without slobbering her down.”
Though W.C. Fields said never to work with children, Lawrence never had any problems. “It was cool. They were professional, a lot of fun, a lot of energy, very funny. So it was good to work with them.”
They even surprised Lawrence athletically. “Actually some of them could really play. I had a basketball court that I set up and I got to watch them play on the court.”
In real life, Lawrence has his own children. At nine, his oldest daughter plays soccer, leaving Lawrence to be the soccer dad on the sidelines. “I’m going to root for her regardless, no matter what she does. I just don’t like to see them when they get hurt and things like that.”
Rebound opens July 1. |
