What a strange little film this is. This film has several parts that most definitely do not fit as a cohesive whole, vacillating wildly from preaching Christian values, to maudlin soap opera, to revenge to cheap sex-and-drug jokes. None of these are done particularly well, all shallow, generic and overdone, but, preposterously, the fact that it's such a Frankenstein's monster of poorly-done styles and that it shifts so frequently makes it far more standable than had it just picked a bad style and ran with it.
The film at large is ALL climax. Every single scene, and damn near every single line is either melodramatic exclamation or a punchline that could end every conceivable "MadTV" sketch. Every line is slopping crafted to elicit an outburst from its audience, be it an "Mmhmm!" or an "Amen". This is a film that just wants to please its audience, to the point that it thinks it's appropriate to bookend an emotional discussion about a family member who has descended into the hell of drugs...with a scene of a woman on lithium smoking a joint and throwing herself into the yard to escape imaginary rabbits. It wants to get a reaction from every scene, it wants you to either be crying or laughing at every single moment of the film, tears flowing regardless of the reaction.
Plot-wise, the film deals with Helen (Kimberly Elise) who as the film starts, is being put out on the street by her husband of 18 years (Steve Harris) as he reveals that he has children with some skank chica. She goes and becomes reacquainted with pistol-packing granny Medea (Tyler Perry) and the rest of her family, in the meantime falling in love with nice guy Orlando (Shemar Moore). But once her soon-to-be-ex-husband is crippled by a hit, she has to choose how she cares for this man that she still loves but threw her out on her ass.
Kimberly Elise does her DAMNEDEST to make a real character out of this, and she's the only character that seems genuinely amazed that she's in this cinematic life, between the shock of the crazy break-up, and the voice-over shock that the guy she's with isn't doing SOMETHING wrong. The rest of the cast doesn't really do much. Shemar Moore has some good chemistry but is mostly the rebound guy, while Steve Harris is TERRIBLE in his delivery, enforcing his character as the cipher Type he is. The rest of the cast is seemingly played by Tyler Perry, including ridiculously over-the-top comic Plot Mechanism Grandma Medea, and his experience on the theater shows through, as it yells every line from every character, seemingly playing to the old ladies in the back of the theatre who are hard of hearing. I'm a bit surprised that Tyler Perry didn't direct, considering music video director Grant shows none of the flourish of music video directors, but none of the surehandedness of someone better. The film is mostly simple point-and-shoot, and Perry could easily have done it, as he apparently did for the sequels and all the other things in the Perry empire.
It's a film designed for a specific group of people (middle-class churchgoing black folk), and its three-headed style monster and its basic emotional conceits make it remarkably easy to watch, and each and every scene seems to be either genuinely entertaining in a trashy sort of way, or unintentionally entertaining...in a trashy sort of way. Well, trashy in an upstanding Christian sort of way. In the sort of way that...uh...well...oh, what the hell? {Grade: 5.5/10 (C+/C) / #38 (of 62) of 2005}
The film at large is ALL climax. Every single scene, and damn near every single line is either melodramatic exclamation or a punchline that could end every conceivable "MadTV" sketch. Every line is slopping crafted to elicit an outburst from its audience, be it an "Mmhmm!" or an "Amen". This is a film that just wants to please its audience, to the point that it thinks it's appropriate to bookend an emotional discussion about a family member who has descended into the hell of drugs...with a scene of a woman on lithium smoking a joint and throwing herself into the yard to escape imaginary rabbits. It wants to get a reaction from every scene, it wants you to either be crying or laughing at every single moment of the film, tears flowing regardless of the reaction.
Plot-wise, the film deals with Helen (Kimberly Elise) who as the film starts, is being put out on the street by her husband of 18 years (Steve Harris) as he reveals that he has children with some skank chica. She goes and becomes reacquainted with pistol-packing granny Medea (Tyler Perry) and the rest of her family, in the meantime falling in love with nice guy Orlando (Shemar Moore). But once her soon-to-be-ex-husband is crippled by a hit, she has to choose how she cares for this man that she still loves but threw her out on her ass.
Kimberly Elise does her DAMNEDEST to make a real character out of this, and she's the only character that seems genuinely amazed that she's in this cinematic life, between the shock of the crazy break-up, and the voice-over shock that the guy she's with isn't doing SOMETHING wrong. The rest of the cast doesn't really do much. Shemar Moore has some good chemistry but is mostly the rebound guy, while Steve Harris is TERRIBLE in his delivery, enforcing his character as the cipher Type he is. The rest of the cast is seemingly played by Tyler Perry, including ridiculously over-the-top comic Plot Mechanism Grandma Medea, and his experience on the theater shows through, as it yells every line from every character, seemingly playing to the old ladies in the back of the theatre who are hard of hearing. I'm a bit surprised that Tyler Perry didn't direct, considering music video director Grant shows none of the flourish of music video directors, but none of the surehandedness of someone better. The film is mostly simple point-and-shoot, and Perry could easily have done it, as he apparently did for the sequels and all the other things in the Perry empire.
It's a film designed for a specific group of people (middle-class churchgoing black folk), and its three-headed style monster and its basic emotional conceits make it remarkably easy to watch, and each and every scene seems to be either genuinely entertaining in a trashy sort of way, or unintentionally entertaining...in a trashy sort of way. Well, trashy in an upstanding Christian sort of way. In the sort of way that...uh...well...oh, what the hell? {Grade: 5.5/10 (C+/C) / #38 (of 62) of 2005}