For Colored Girls - a great and honest piece of cinema

MotherMayI

This movie was in my view brilliantly done. I have a love-hate relationship with Tyler. I think he is the best producer in the world when it comes to casting actors of color, selecting music and scores for his films and promoting his films. But I have been a critic of Tyler's writing because his evil characters have always been very one-dimensional and over the top evil. However in this movie, although you feel disdain for certain characters and the situations that were presented, it is clear that every character had a reason for the way they were and thus you could actually empathize with most of the characters. I am pleased that there were no caricatures. Every character I felt had faults/weaknesses and strengths. I loved the motif of the characters passing each other by in the beginning half which all culminated at the pivotal point in the movie with them beginning to band together to the aid of each other.

I think it was a strong ensemble cast(including Janet) and should be nominated as such, much like they did with the movie "Crash". However in my view Oscar nods are due for Kimberly Elise and Phylicia Rashad. As someone else mentioned, the scene with them at the end was deeply moving. I think even for Michael although I would guess the black community does not want to see another of our males nominated for something negative but he played that part really honestly and showed great turmoil.

I feel that people are unjustly criticizing Janet. The only issue I had was that I wish her voice was stronger. I made the observation also, that she stole some of her mannerisms from Meryl Streep's character in "The Devil Wears Prada" seeing as she was playing a similar character. I think the stoicism and "lack of emotion", that she is being criticized for, actually lends itself to the character. Her lack of expression may be a result of botox which would be very common for her character to have in addition to the type of person her character was - one that tried to hide her emotion. I think she showed that tendency of trying to hide emotion very well. Thandie was also awesome and her character quite layered. For some reason I couldn't imagine Mariah Carey actually in that role but it would have been interesting to see her interpretation.

I have noticed that someone mentioned anachronism and wondered about the era that the movie is set in. It has been stated by the actors, and even based on the mise-en-scene itself we can tell, that the movie is set in present day although the play is set in the 70's. They simply were able to transfer Michael Ealy's character having been in the Vietnam War to being in the present day Iraq War. Nobody used cell phones because nobody in the movie talked on telephones.

I don't understand why critics praised "Precious" yet would bash this. I thought Precious was good for an independent effort but I feel this movie - look-wise is far better and it had better acting overall, than did "Precious". It also showed far more variety in emotions. Precious was just sad straight through. In our theater there was laughing, there was crying, there was disbelief - and there was great drama/action. I mean there were scenes I was too afraid to watch, scenes I couldn't take my eyes off and scenes that were hilarious and serious all at the same time.

I think this is a great piece of cinema by Tyler Perry, with great dialog, great actors and a great look and while it may not be perfect, no film is.

score 9/10

MotherMayI 6 November 2010

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2334741/