Overall Rating
 Awesome: 34.48%
Worth A Look: 11.49%
Just Average: 5.75%
Pretty Crappy: 19.54%
Sucks: 28.74%
4 reviews, 63 user ratings
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| Diary of a Mad Black Woman |
by Elaine Perrone
"Review of a disgusted white woman."
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I hardly know where to begin enumerating the sins of Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman, a stunningly mean-spirited dramedy that is neither dramatic nor comical, and that is made even more insulting by its simple-minded and hypocritical pseudo-Christian smugness.Diary is an unpleasant blend of Big Momma's House and Misery, populated with cartoonish characters and filled with flatulence jokes, puerile sentimentality, and ridiculous plot contrivances that lead to a message of "forgiveness" – which, to all appearances here, one arrives at after one has gotten all the violence and revenge out of his or her system.
To the outside world, Helen McCarter (Kimberly Elise) and her husband Charles (Steve Harris) are a golden couple in Atlanta society. Charles is a wildly successful attorney, well respected in his profession, and he and Helen live in a country mansion, complete with swimming pool and tennis court, that makes Tara look like a summer cottage. Although he has cheated on her and verbally abused her for years, Helen is stunned when, on their 18th anniversary, Charles throws her bodily out of their home so that he can move in his mistress and their two children. Apparently having made no friends in all those years, Helen wanders around aimlessly in a U-Haul for hours until finally landing back in the ghetto, on the doorstep of her gun-totin', sass-talkin' granny, Madea (short for Mama Dear), played in drag by Tyler Perry, who takes on two other roles in the movie. Rounding out Helen's ghetto-dwelling clan are Madea's much-fartin', sass-talkin' brother Joe (Perry, again, in makeup); Helen's cousin Debrah (Tamara Taylor), a ragin' crack 'ho; and Debrah's sorrowful husband Brian (Perry, again, without makeup), who is raising their two children alone while their mother is off crackin' and 'hoin'.
Helen's mother (a sinfully wasted Cicely Tyson) is in a nursing home spoutin' platitudes and sayin' Amen.
In between the jokes about flatulence, masturbation, Viagra, and a relative who hallucinates that rabbits are chasing her when she smokes pot, hilarity ensues in the form of Madea and Helen going on cathartic rampages of property destruction and assault. One despicable sub-plot results in Helen viciously catapulting a paralyzed man, who she has forced to sit in his own excrement for three days, out of a wheelchair and into a hot tub, nearly drowning him.
Diary features a tepid romance between Helen and Orlando (Shemar Moore), a steel mill worker who is as much a cookie-cutter knight-in-shining-armor as Charles is a cookie-cutter evil monster. (With lines like, "I've got it so bad for you, I'd go to the store and buy you feminine products," Orlando really needs to work on his technique, though.) The two 30-somethings date for four months but never have sex, because he is a Christian and because all he really wants is to give Helen "intimacy." And we're supposed to buy this bullshit!In the end, everyone finds Jesus – and only Jesus, as they proudly shout out in a jaw-droppingly bigoted gospel lyric about needing "not Buddha, not Mohammed, but Jesus in your heart" – and faith conquers all. It is actually a shame that writer Perry, who adapted his own play for the screen, chose to take such a simplistic and often-repugnant approach to what truly could have been a strong film about a woman finding empowerment and redemption through loss, grief, and forgiveness.
link directly to this review at https://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=11768&reviewer=376
originally posted: 02/24/05 20:21:45
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USA
25-Feb-2005 (PG-13)
DVD: 28-Jun-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
N/A
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