By Matthew Wood
The question Tyler Perry asks in his newest movie, WHY DID I GET MARRIED?, is whether or not it’s worth the inevitable pain and heartache to get spend your life with another person. My question is, am I missing something here? It’s not that this was necessarily a bad movie. It was just completely pointless and unrealistic.
I don’t mean to hate, because I have enjoyed some of Perry’s previous work. And I appreciate that he could be in front of a camera not dressed in drag for once. But really, I just didn’t get the point. And apparently I was in the minority (no pun intended) of a completely black audience that hooted and hollered throughout the movie and seemed to love every minute of it.
A quick synopsis: Four wealthy black couples head on a week-long vacation retreat to the mountains in Colorado. One of the couples brings a female friend along, who just happens to be sleeping with the husband (Richard T. Jones). Hilarity (and insanity) ensues.
In one rather darkly comical dinner, all the couples’ secrets come out, leading to a divorce, a separation and a whole lot of scenes filled with soul-searching, crying and Janet Jackson trying her hardest – and failing miserably – to be an actress.
Jackson couldn’t show a facial expression if you paid her a multimillion dollar deal. And call me crazy, but she’s looking (and sounding) more like Michael every day. This is not a good thing. I saw her fail to act her way out of a paper bag nearly a decade ago in NUTTY PROFESSOR 2 and figured she realized it wasn’t in the cards. So whose brilliant idea was it to make her more or less the focal point of this movie? She plays Patricia, a top-notch psychologist who wrote a book about the group, entitled – get this – “Why Did I Get Married?”
Her entirely bland performance sets up the rest of the cast for failure, making them feel the need to over-emote to get any sort of reaction from the audience. And speaking of chicks who can sing but can’t act, Jill Scott looks like she’s put on Eddie Murphy’s fat suit from his Nutty Professor days as the submissive Sheila – who for some reason invites a “friend” that everybody knows is banging her husband, setting off the aforementioned hilarity. She spends the entire movie looking for a cue to start breaking out in gospel, sniffling and sobbing and trying to get everyone to give a crap about her pathetic life. Seriously, why would anyone marry this fat toad? You love her story of redemption – after Mike (Jones) divorces her on the spot at the fateful dinner, she stays in Colorado and woos the local sheriff – but it’s just so completely unbelievable. First of all, what are the odds that the only other black person in Colorado happens to be the sheriff of the town they all go to?
OK, we’ll let that one slide. But that’s just one of the many clichéd storylines that keep dragging this whole thing down.
Yes, there are some funny moments. Tasha Smith, as the sharp-tongued (and raging alcoholic) Angela, gives an uproarious, if not over-the-top, performance. But isn’t she just the clichéd sassy black woman that’s always speaking her mind? Really, black people? Don’t you deserve a more well-developed character?
I think that’s my biggest problem with the whole thing. It’s a nice message, that of redemption and the nice guy (or gal) winning out. But the set-up is just so contrived, so unbelievable, it brings everything down.
Sorry, Tyler. You have apparently cornered the market on black-themed entertainment. But this white guy is not impressed. Is it a racial thing? I don’t think so. I think it’s more of a “bad movie” thing. And this, brothers and sisters, is what we’ve got on our hands here.