"For Colored Girls" Movie Review (2010)

"For Colored Girls"

Movie Review

Directed by Tyler Perry, Written by Tyler Perry (screenplay) and Ntozake Shange (play), RatedR, 134-minutes.

By our guest blogger, Matt Schimkowitz

Tyler Perry returns to the screen with a religious parable about African American woman in extremely abusive situations. Once again, favoring melodrama over reality, Perry overextends his bounds and delivers a poorly filmed series of worst case scenarios elevated to tolerable heights by a fantastic cast.

Despite the sheer amount of time Perry has spent behind the camera, he still has very little idea on how to use it or how to direct. His characters are flat, his framing is awkward and his overall message is weighed down by a hammy script filled with exhausting verses about what Perry already has pounded into our skulls.

The film is about eight women representing different threats to femininity. Crystal (Kimberly Elise) is physically abused by her veteran boyfriend; Juanita (Loretta Devine) is emotionally abused by her absentee boyfriend; Yasmine (Anika Noni Rose) is raped; Nyla (Tessa Thompson) is underage and pregnant; Tangle (Thandi Newton) is promiscuous; and Jo (Janet Jackson) is in a loveless marriage with a gay man.

"For Colored Girls" checks in on each woman as they are frequently victimized and, occasionally, brutalized; however, we never spend enough time with any one of them to allow for subtle growth. Perry gives us a little taste of everyone and attempts to make those moments count by taking things to the extreme.

In Crystal’s case, she's the mother of two children who frequently witness their father’s abuse on their mother.  Without question, her story is a sad one, but Perry characterizes her boyfriend as laughably cliché. His violence reaches absurd heights when he **spoilers** throws his children out of his apartment window.

Perry assumes that if a situation isn’t taken to an extreme, he won’t get the desired reaction from his audience--revulsion.  It's as if an abusive relationship isn’t horrible enough. How Perry works is both manipulative and melodramatic.  Worse, his script and direction are so poor, his story is rarely effective.

The cast handles all of this with control and versatility. Everyone gives a solid effort among the ridiculous monologues and one-note characterizations that break from the sense of realism Perry hoped to instill.

"For Colored Girls" is an exhausting film. Its scenarios are extreme and poorly handled, and the dialogue is unnecessarily verbose.  It’s a sad fact for fans of the play and also for those seeking a movie that shrewdly displays this criminally underrepresented perspective.

After years of playing Madea, Perry still only knows how to make caricatures of women, and this film is the sorry proof.

Grade C-