Diary Of A Mad Black Woman Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)February 18th, 2005
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Diary of an Angry White Critic
Dear Diary,
I just got home from a screening of what may have been the most retarded movie I have ever seen. It's called Diary of a Mad Black Woman, and it plays like an awful hybrid of Big Momma's House and The Burning Bed - two films that go together like peanut butter and pubic lice. Woman is the brainchild of Tyler Perry, who went from being homeless to being the toast of the theatre world after creating a series of plays featuring a gun-toting, pot-smoking, trash-talking grandmother. I don't know how entertaining any of Perry's plays were, but I can tell you his big screen debut is about as effective as a third-rate Eddie Murphy impressionist hijacking your life for two hours. Errr...only without the predilection for transvestites with big feet.
Perry, whose name appears in Woman's credits with a ferocity not seen since The Cosby Show was yanked off of television, plays three different characters. Two of them are colorful elderly people who seem like less-funny relations to the Klumps (get this - the old guy farts really loudly! and it smells bad, too! can you imagine?). The third shows us the serious side of Perry's acting talent, which actually isn't that bad. Or maybe it just seems that way because Woman's star, Kimbery Elise, could be the worst actress on the planet. Hell, even Ben Affleck might seem competent sharing scenes with Elise. Hey, take it easy, Diary - I said "might."
Elise plays Helen McCarter, the devoted wife of powerful criminal defense attorney Charles McCarter (Steve Harris). We learn, through horrifyingly bland voiceover, very little about Helen before she discovers Charles has another woman and a couple of kids on the side. In no time flat, Charles is dragging Helen out of the house and changing the locks, forcing Our Girl to re-establish the ghetto roots he pried her away from once his law practice began to take off many years ago.
This when we're introduced to Perry's Madea, her brother Joe (also Perry), as well as a handful of other characters who mill in and out of Helen's life at a jarringly uneven pace. There's the impossibly perfect guy (Shemar Moore) who is so in touch with his feelings for Helen, he actually sprouts a vagina. There's Helen's mom (Cicely Tyson), who has been living in a nursing home even though she way less decrepit - mentally and physically - than either Madea or Joe. And there's the cousin (Tamara Taylor) who started smoking crack when Helen moved on up to her deluxe apartment in the sky-hi-hi. I don't know about you, Diary, but I once smoked peyote when my cousin painted his living room a color I didn't like.
Fifty minutes into Woman, we begin to hear Helen's diary entries, but are given no indication whether she just started keeping it, or had been using it for years. The film's early voiceover quickly vanished and was never portrayed as something found in a diary. If what we're seeing in the film is actually a visualization of Helen's diary, we should only see scenes which involve her character. But, of course, we don't. This is shoddy filmmaking at its finest.
There is so much more nonsense in Woman, but I don't want to go too far into "spoiler" territory. The bottom line is this: Tyler Perry is the poor man' s Martin Lawrence. Martin Lawrence is the poor man's Eddie Murphy. And Eddie Murphy hasn't been funny in about 20 years. Except for the transvestite thing. That was hysterical.
2:00 - for drug content, thematic elements, crude sexual references and some violence
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