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Take "Meet the Parents", cross it with "Dan in Real Life", add a dash of "The Heartbreak Kid", and sprinkle it all with essence of Tyler Perry and you'd get "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins", a noisy, scattershot comedy that's as predictable as it is shrill and wastes a lot of otherwise promising material on old formulas and tired stereotypes.

Writer-director Malcolm D. Lee - who's done better work in 1999's "The Best Man" and 2005's Bow Wow charmer "Roll Bounce" - doesn't stray far from the Farrelly Brothers playbook. Martin Lawrence plays the title character, a Georgia boy who, after being overshadowed one too many times by his fiercely competitive adopted brother (played in later life by Cedric the Entertainer), moves to the big city, changes his name, and finds fame and fortune in the guise of a Jerry Springer-esque talk show (under the nom de stage RL Stevens), a hit book ("The Team of Me") and a vapid trophy bride-to-be (Joy Bryant).

There are some possibilities here and, for a time, it looks like Mr. Lawrence, a talented comedian who frequently opts for the easy gag, may be turning in the type of restrained performance that made Steve Carell's "Dan in Real Life" character work - his relationship with his son has particular promise. But alas no. Mr. Lee's script saddles Roscoe with a ridiculously shallow fiancé (not only does she call his kid "pathetic" but when she finds out his real name is Roscoe, she actually sneers at him) and wouldn't you know it, she's cartoonishly violent in bed (a la Malin Akerman in the recent "Heartbreak Kid" remake). Much fun is made of the fact that Ms. Bryant's character was a "Survivor" winner, but Mr. Lee's script doesn't possess the subtlety of satire, opting instead to call her a "bad bitch".

When Roscoe is guilt-tripped into taking the midday plane to Georgia for his parents' 50th wedding anniversary, he runs into a slew of familiar faces. Mo'Nique is in overdrive as Roscoe's randy cousin, Mike Epps treads on familiar ground as a motor-mouthed comic relief, Margaret Avery retains her dignity as the mom, and Michael Clarke Duncan and James Earl Jones have a bass-off as cousin Otis and the family patriarch, respectively. Only Nicole Ari Parker is oddly miscast as Roscoe's high school crush. The two stare longingly for much of the film but never quite sell the chemistry.

Everyone gives it their all and makes the best of this B-grade material. There are plenty of punches, pratfalls, and gross-out gags (mainly involving dog-on-dog love) which could be cribbed from any Farrelly outtake reel. But none of it adds up to much more than a noisy two hours at the movies. For a time, I was willing to welcome Roscoe Jenkins. But by the time he made his heartfelt redemption speech, I was the one who was ready to go home.