Diary Of A Mad Black Woman Review
by Laura Clifford (laura AT reelingreviews DOT com)February 25th, 2005
DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN
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Helen McCarter (Kimberly Elise, "The Manchurian Candidate," "Woman Thou Art Loosed") is a wealthy Atlanta society woman cocooned in a happy nest with her attorney husband Charles (Steve Harris, "Bringing Down the House"), or so she thinks. On the eve of their eighteenth wedding anniversary, Helen finds out that she's being replaced and quick as a wink is living the "Diary of a Mad Black Woman."
Playwright Tyler Perry, whose palatial Atlanta manse stands in for the McCarter estate, is living proof that there's no accounting for taste. He's adapted his popular 2000 play, put it into the hands of Destiny's Child video director Darren Grant and given himself three roles. The end results is something like "Waiting to Exhale" crossed with "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps" and "Big Momma's House." "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" is one of those movies that's so jaw-droppingly ridiculous that it becomes entertaining.
Helen is clearly deluded. Her husband runs cold in private and hot in public, and is caught in his office with a much younger white woman and racially mixed child that his assistants are trying to shield her from. Charles blows kisses from the podium accepting the Bob Feinstein attorney of the year award, then drops Helen off at home saying he has to return to the office. The next day, Helen is literally dragged kicking and screaming out of her home because Charles has decided to move in the mother of his children (Lisa Marcos, TV's "Kevin Hill," as Brenda).
Charles has cut Helen off from her family over the years, but after driving around all night in the moving van her husband helpfully hired for her, Helen arrives at Madea's (Perry), who immediately begins plotting revenge and waving her pistol around. She's astonished to discover her old good friend Debrah (Tamara Taylor, "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge") is now a junkie. After raising some ruckus at Charles', Madea throws a party that enables Helen to reconnect with cousin Brian (Perry again), the attorney married to Debrah, who 'introduces' her to Orlando (Shemar Moore, TV's "The Young and the Restless"), the guy who Charles hired to clear her out of his home. Sparks eventually fly, but when Charles is shot by a drug lord and abandoned by Brenda, Helen, not yet divorced, rushes back to her old life.
Perry, who must be commended for the humorous character of Madea (a contraction of 'mother dear'), in addition to playing Madea's brother Tom and their nephew Brian, has written a script that would make most soap operas look subtle. Charles is such a cold fish that it is impossible to envision a time when he was a good husband. Orlando, on the other hand, is a steel worker who labors twelve hours a day, has a taste for pricey jazz clubs and doesn't believe in sex before marriage! Grant lets Perry's script dictate a wildly uneven tone, allowing the film to careen from gushy romance to slapstick to Debrah's uplifting, stuck-on redemption subplot (which culminates in a Church scene that must be seen to be believed). Perry even caps his story with an ending straight out of "An Officer and a Gentleman" just for good measure.
The screenwriter, who has played the character of Madea on stage (she's featured in a few of his plays), clearly has on screen talent. Despite annoying overuse of her pistol prop, even under house arrest, Madea is a fun, larger than life character. Brian, by contrast, is a good-looking, serious minded husband and father coping with his wife's drug addiction. Tom, the other character Perry plays under wig and makeup, is the comic sounding board for Madea who invites the comparison to Eddie Murphy's Klumps. Elise is as appealing as possible playing a character who cannot see the obvious through about eighty percent of the picture. Cicely Tyson ("Because of Winn-Dixie") has a small role as Helen's mother, not bitter after being prematurely put in a home to satisfy her son-in-law. She dispenses advice that's a little less drastic than Madea's. (It should be noted that Tyson seems at least two decades older than Madea, who would have been married to her father.)
"Diary of a Mad Black Woman" is one of the kookiest melanges of romance, drama, comedy and spirituality that have ever been exposed to film. It's laughable, but oddly likeable.
C
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