Great actors can’t make up for a bad movie overall, whether it’s a small budget, a flawed story or bad directing. What’s more, a great performance by celebrated actors in a bad movie will annoy both critics and viewers and the movie will end up with a worse review than it would have if the chosen stars would have been less appreciated ones.

This seems to be the case for “Soul Men”, starring Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac. The two stars play a couple of former back-up singers, who decide to make a spectacular comeback. The reason for which the say goodbye to retirement is that their former band leader died, and their comeback is the tribute paid to him.

Louis Hinds and Floyd Henderson travel from California to New York, a road trip filled with an assortment of toilet humor jokes, ranging from classics such as rectal-exam references to the more modern-day Viagra jokes. Unfortunately, the movie is also packed with misogynistic jokes, which are probably even worse than the proctologist visits the two men evoke.

Some humorous scenes are also cringe-worthy, as it often happens. One of these scenes has Floyd preparing to receive oral sex from a groupie so “young” that she had to take out her false teeth beforehand. Bernie Mac’s character, Floyd, seems to have picked the short straw in life, as his character has a bad hip and an erectile dysfunction. Louis, however, played by Jackson, is an ex-convict with Taoist convictions.

The movie is enjoyable mainly because of these two great actors, who you get to see singing and dancing, seemingly pulled from another musical and fashion era and forcefully inducted into our own.