So, I saw For Colored Girls. My sister, best friend and I went to see it on opening night in the city. Yeah, that was some mess. Let me backtrack for a second. Earlier that day I read a couple of reviews for the movie in the paper. They were harsh. I mean, "anyone involved with the movie should be embarrassed" and "this movie is just begging for an award. They won't win." Ow! I mean, I didn't think people would think the movie was THAT bad, Tyler Perry's other movies didn't even get that poor of reviews. However, maybe they didn't think those movies were good enough to be reviewed.
Basically most of the reviewers complained about the fact that the movie was depressing. And it was. The main characters deal with HIV, sexual assaults, abortions, child murders, and cheating boyfriends. And unlike other movies that deal with these issues, like The Color Purple and Precious, there is no happy ending. The women just decide to deal with their issues.
Phylicia Rashad, Loretta Devine, and Whoopi Goldberg gave the best performances. Their performances screamed veterans. They were totally immersed in their characters and that made the movie so enjoyable for me. Now, the rest of the cast was amazing but these three stole the show. It was like whenever they walked onto the screen, the entire audience perked up.
And even though the movie is called, For Colored Girls, we cannot forget the performances of the good for nothing men in the movie. Michael Ealy, unsurprisingly, stands above the rest. He played a war veteran who turned into an abusive husband and father as he dealt with post traumatic stress disorder. His performance was stellar, just the right amount of unstableness and crazy.
There were some misses as well. I'm still confused as to Kerry Washington's point in the movie. I don't blame her, she could only work with what she was given. And Thandie Newton's accent? She must have gone to the Idris Elba school of Languages and Accents. What do I mean? Well, do you notice that no matter where his character is for whatever movie, he always has a Brooklyn accent? I digress.
Should you go see this movie? If you are easily shocked or offended, don't go see the movie. Wait, until it comes on television and they block out certain images. I'm not easily shocked and there were some moments where I had to shut my eyes, because there was just an overload of images.
I give the movie a B-, the performances were stellar and the monologues, which were NOT written by Tyler Perry (they were written by the author of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuf, Ntozake Shange) were of course, amazing. However, the back stories of the women... Well, you know Tyler Perry. Overkill. Cliches. Too much, too fast. The end of the play is uplifting and powerful, in the movie it's all melancholy and sadness. But, that's just me, tell me what you thought.
