I thought this movie was awful. The one character I enjoy in the movie that is original and multi-dimensional, should be the one carrying the movie. That character is Madea herself. Madea's part in the movie has been reduced, in my opinion, from the stage plays and that character is really the attraction. This screenplay is like a salad. It's full of a lot of things but there's no substance. The plot however, is always the same. A bad man, abusing a woman with extremely low self-esteem, who rises out of the ashes of her abuse and meets the good man who sweeps her off her feet, or in this case her abused and unloved sister's feet.
Perry really needs help with his screen writing. Is it a comedy or is it a drama? It's all intermingled and isn't easily transitioned. The best scene in the film was between Lynn Whitfield and Blair Underwood. The acting was good, there was pretty good dialog and the chemistry was excellent. However, the monologue by Cicely Tyson at the family reunion made absolutely no sense in relation to the context of film.
Perry tries to include too many sub-plots and in doing this just skims the surface. This keeps you from caring about the characters because they are not fully developed. There's the sub-plot of the abused woman, the sub-plot of her abused and unloved sister, the sub-plot of her abusive mother, the sub-plot of the foster child, the sub-plot of the guy who falls in love with the abused sister, the sub-plot of the abuser (which never develops, i.e. we never find out anything about him or why he's abusive, but just that he's abusive), and we've got the family reunion to deal with. However we don't know who's who in the family. Suddenly these unknown characters have these massive monologues we have to deal with in addition to trying to figure out why these characters are important to the film. It's a mess.
Perry really needs help with his screen writing. Is it a comedy or is it a drama? It's all intermingled and isn't easily transitioned. The best scene in the film was between Lynn Whitfield and Blair Underwood. The acting was good, there was pretty good dialog and the chemistry was excellent. However, the monologue by Cicely Tyson at the family reunion made absolutely no sense in relation to the context of film.
Perry tries to include too many sub-plots and in doing this just skims the surface. This keeps you from caring about the characters because they are not fully developed. There's the sub-plot of the abused woman, the sub-plot of her abused and unloved sister, the sub-plot of her abusive mother, the sub-plot of the foster child, the sub-plot of the guy who falls in love with the abused sister, the sub-plot of the abuser (which never develops, i.e. we never find out anything about him or why he's abusive, but just that he's abusive), and we've got the family reunion to deal with. However we don't know who's who in the family. Suddenly these unknown characters have these massive monologues we have to deal with in addition to trying to figure out why these characters are important to the film. It's a mess.