An indication of the rough time men will have in this latest outing from Tyler Perry is that the most finely drawn male character (one of five as opposed to ten women) is a psychotic, alcoholic war veteran.
So it is that Perry brings Ntozake Shange's litany of feminine suffering (largely at masculine hands) to the screen. With 20 poems in the original production, there's more than enough drama to go around, even with just about every Black actress in Hollywood on this picture (except Viola Davis). There are Perry regualrs, like Loretta Devine and Janet Jackson and Kimberly Elise (the latter playing a mother who bears the ultimate agony), and newbies like Onik Noni Rose (from the Disney animation The Princess and the Frog), Macy Gray - as a bitter alcoholic abortionist.
And then there is Thandie Newton. As the mid-generational bridge between Whoopi Goldberg's Bible-thumping cultist and Tessa Thompson's trapped teen, she has a real opportunity to be more than just an interesting sidebar in ordinary films. Playing a glamourpuss bartender who seduces men at the drop of a hat to cover up her own lack of love, she burns across the screen from the get-go.
But with Perry's ham-fisted style, we get killed with one soliloquy too many... or maybe five. The women's tribulations rush up at us, slap us up and down the head and go only to make room for the next, each marked by the affected character bursting into verse (very good verse, mind you, but it gets tired real quick).
We feel for these women, but ultimately, we're just not moved.
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