Dialogue
Critic Pally: “Calling For Colored Girls the best thing Tyler Perry has ever done is pretty faint praise. Terrific performances buried inside an after-school special about abuse, sexual repression, rape, etc.”
Me: “A journalist friend said it has great performances.”
Critic Pally: “Except one character is a high-powered magazine exec whose lofty status apparently has emasculated her stockbroker husband to the point that he’s gay.”
Me: “He turns gay at…what, age 35 because his wife makes him feel unimportant and diminished? That sounds ridiculous. Does the movie feel like now or like a ’70s thing, which is when the play was written?”
Critic Pally: “Call me crazy, but I think that devoting a long segment to a girl getting a back-alley abortion — in New York City in 2010 — is a tad anachronistic. That had resonance in 1976, when Roe v Wade was still a recent thing — but it seems kind of clueless today, unless Perry means it as a pro-life statement.”
Me: “What about Janet Jackson?”
Critic Pally: “I have to say that Janet Jackson looks/sounds like a transgender Michael Jackson. She’s distractingly unnatural-looking.”
Me: “It sounds perfectly dreadful.”
Critic Pally: “I actually admire the original for what it is: a series of poetic monologues. But Perry, in adapting it, felt compelled to create characters with stories and intertwine them in trite and obvious ways.”
Me: “Perry is a mediocre director, at best, who feeds a niche audience (i.e., older African American women with no taste) and that’s all he’ll ever be. Lionsgate’s release and awards campaign is strictly a good-manners political gesture. They’re basically saying ‘thank you, Tyler, for making us lots of money with your previous terrible movies.’”
“It’s a little harsh.” – Carl Spackler
IMO, the source material has aged as well as a Gold and Avocado living room from the 70′s.
The original title of this, “for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf” is actually only the second funniest title ever created. The winner is, “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God”.
I REALLY don’t miss the 70′s!
You know he can’t be trusted. Critic Pally ends in a “y” and is definitely a Bowery Boys name.
So he “turns gay” because his wife “emasculates” him. Wow. Its anti-career-woman and homophobic at the same time – a church lady twofer!
Yeesh, I was just wondering whether this was being done as a ’70s period piece or if it was being “updated” — sounds like Miss Tyler P chose the worst of both worlds.
The best Tyler Perry movie is Star Trek. Oh wait…
The trailer played before HEREAFTER, I’m so screwed, because the wife is interested. She’s seeing BLACK SWAN if I have to drag her!
He’s an even shittier writer and the fact he has decided to re-write this bodes very, very bad.
Is your critic pally named Frankie, by any chance?
I love that you’re bending over backwards to convince us all that an Ed Zwick romantic comedy is the second coming of Hal Ashb,y but absolutely can’t face the very idea that Tyler Perry might have made an okay movie.