When it comes to Hollywood movies, “If you want to send a message,” as Samuel Goldwyn reportedly once said, “use Western Union.”

“First Sunday,” a new slice of “Barbershop”-brand ‘hood’s-eye-view Hollywood Americana from Ice Cube’s production imprint, Cube Vision, is a comic spin on heist movies that delivers two messages so diametrically opposed that they cancel each other out.

Despite LeeJohn’s (Tracy Morgan) crooked ways, he and hardworking and hard-luck family man Durell (Ice Cube) have remained friends since their childhood in Baltimore. When Durell’s very estranged girlfriend Omunique (Regina Hall) threatens to leave the city and take their son with her unless Durell can raise $17,000, he gives in and agrees to help LeeJohn deliver a truckload of hijacked wheelchairs across town. But before you can say “end of Act 1,” Durell and LeeJohn are caught, sentenced to 5,000 hours of community service, and find themselves dangerously in debt to the Caribbean mobsters who took a loss when the wheelchair deal went south.

LeeJohn’s plan B is an after-hours visit to the local church to make off with the safe-load of fundraising cash within. With his son’s answering-machine plea — “please don’t let Mom take me to Atlanta” — ringing in his ears, the initially reluctant Durell decides to go along. The church is not empty, alas, and what was to be a break-in soon escalates into a hostage crisis. The safe, alas, is empty, and Durell, LeeJohn, the church’s pastor (Chi McBride), his foxy daughter (Malinda Williams), the unctuous church deacon (Michael Beach), the effete choirmaster (Katt Williams), and assorted parishioners have a mystery to solve, along with a standoff to resolve. What ensues is gooey gobs of threats, sentimental backstory, transparent plotting, and changes of heart so preposterously unmotivated that it’s hard to believe they survived the pitch stage. If “First Sunday” could only maintain the abrasive comic energy it generates in its first 15 minutes, none of that would matter. But Mr. Cube’s deadly serious, brusque but tender screen persona and Mr. Morgan’s rubber-face sputtering are good for laughs only as long as there’s something to laugh about. As the SWAT team moves into position, the humor situation is already more desperate than anything faced by the film’s characters.

“They’re just like Saul before he became Paul,” offers church lady Momma T (Olivia Cole) about the two bumbling crooks. “They just needed a change in direction.” The change in direction that “First Sunday” takes from gritty and funny to smarmy and sanctimonious is harrowing enough to induce sensibility whiplash. Part of the problem is writer and first-time director David E. Talbert’s escalating use of explicatory cell phone calls, a gruesomely manipulative musical score, and tight close-ups of resolutely nodding heads to gain specious dramatic traction.

Goldwyn may have been being flip, but he knew from cinematic messages. When movies grab hold, it’s generally from the lowest rung. The high-minded moralizing in “First Sunday” about forgiveness and the sanctity of fatherhood is all well and good, but it’s no match for images of casual gunplay, hysterical homophobia, and misogyny that are far closer to the real heart and inspiration behind this film. As the laughs vanish, the story ossifies, and cliché characters dissolve into stereotypes, all that remains are the same tried and true, non-religious macho pieties that Hollywood has sold audiences for decades. Anger gets the job done, money solves everything, and change is what happens when everyone — especially women — relents, shuts up, and gives you what you asked for in the first place.