Movie Review Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself

Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself (2009) 

Directed by Tyler Perry

Written by Tyler Perry

Starring Taraji P. Henson, Brian White, Adam Rodriguez, Tyler Perry, Gladys Knight, Mary J. Blige

Release Date September 11th, 2009

Published September 12th, 2009

There are two Tyler Perry's. One is an amateurish boor of a director who interrupts his storytelling so he can cavort about in drag. Tyler Perry is a socially conscious filmmaker who uses this milieu to make valuable points about love, family and community that no other director has dealt with so openly, earnestly and sincerely.

The battle between these two sides of Mr. Perry has delivered mixed results with his poor direction and bad choices as a writer undercut the important social issues he wishes to shine a light upon. Perry's latest film, I Can Do Bad All By Myself, is a perfect example of the two Tyler Perry's.

Taraji P. Henson stars in I Can Do Bad All By Myself as April, a self absorbed wannabe chanteuse singing for indifferent bar patrons. Nights spent on stage are followed by drunken later nights with her married, emotionally abusive boyfriend (Brian White). Alone in her home, just down the street from her church, April seems sadly content.

April's life is upended one morning when she finds Madea (Tyler Perry) angry on her doorstep with April's niece Jennifer (Hope Olaide Wilson) and her two young nephews. The kids had broken into Madea's home the night before and because their mother, a crackhead, has died and their grandmother has gone missing, Madea has brought them to April.

Immediately after taking in the kids, April 's life is interrupted again as her pastor (Marvin Winans) shows up asking her to take in a missionary from South America, Sandino (Adam Rodriguez). In exchange for room and board he will repair her decrepit townhouse. All of this further inflames her boyfriend who will become the villain of the piece when needed.

Part of Tyler Perry's many issues are characters like that played by Brian White. The character is all malevolence with zero nuance. He is a contrivance of a plot that will need a villain to give focus and context to a movie that meanders through one explanatory piece of dialogue after another.

Then there is Madea who continues to exist in this uncanny valley of oddity and humor. Is the character funny? Yes. However, funny doesn't justify the continued shoehorning of this bizarre drag character into what are ostensibly serious social dramas. I understand Perry's wanting to lighten the mood, he's dealing with heavy issues. Unfortunately, he undermines those issues by whirling about in a dress.

It's difficult to take Perry seriously when he keeps interrupting his drama so he can run around in drag. It's a real shame because the issues he deals with are so very important and deeply meaningful. Even with his lack of directorial skill. Even with his limitations as a filmic storyteller, Perry's care in dealing with deep issues comes through and is communicated well enough to touch the audience.

I was moved by the things that the children and April dealt with. Physical, sexual and emotional abuse are the norm for these characters. The healing they find in each other and in their church is moving and unexpectedly powerful, even for an agnostic such as myself.

Sadly, Perry cannot get out of his own way. Even as his characters are going through stunning emotional crises Perry can't help but interrupt with Madea or maybe some unrelated musical moment. Don't get me wrong Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige are national treasures who I would pay good money to see under any circumstance however the songs they perform in the movie hobble the pace and being that they are sort of Greek chorus songs, they contribute to Perry's tendency for overstating a point.

What the good Tyler Perry does is so valuable. He addresses major issues with care, sensitivity and sincerity that few other filmmakers can muster. The bad Tyler Perry just keeps getting in the way. Whether it's Madea or his tendency for obvious dialogue, Perry lacks polish and self control and his films, his important issues, are hamstrung as a result.

Movie Review: Fighting

Fighting (2009) 

Directed by Dito Montiel 

Written by Robert Munic, Dito Montiel 

Starring Channing Tatum, Terrence Howard, Luis Guzman, Brian White 

Release Date April 24th, 2009

Published April 24th, 2009 

Fighting is one of the stranger moviegoing experiences of my short career as a critic. I was really, really impressed with the work of director Dito Montiel in creating characters and a universe for them to exist in that felt immediate and real. I was impressed with star Channing Tatum's natural charisma masked within the role of a kid whose a little slow witted but has a big heart. Tatum alongside Oscar winner Terrence Howard deliver performances pitched well above the B-movie grit of the story.

Then an odd thing happens. The end of Fighting arrives and you realize that the story and many of the character motivations made absolutely no sense and moreover, no one seems to have cared to script the ending in any kind of believable fashion. So irritated was I by this complete disregard for storytelling that I cannot even recommend the movie despite being so impressed with so much of what I saw.

In Fighting Channing Tatum plays Shawn McArthur a homeless kid who sells used Ipods and fake Harry Potter books on street corners. One day as he is selling his wares a group of teens attempt to rob him and Shawn defends himself with serious brute force. His fighting style catches the eye of the man who sent the teens to rob him.

His name is Harvey (Terrence Howard) and he happens to work somehow within the shady world of underground fighting and gambling. He finds fighters to bet on or against, depending on whether they are willing to throw fights or are good enough to win fights. Shawn is good enough to win repeatedly though throwing a fight has more of a guarantee of getting paid.

The world of Fighting really comes together in these strange underground worlds where Shawn is brought to fight. They could be the setting for a very cool videogame but they are dressed up well enough that we are convinced of their otherworldly reality and as Shawn fights we are absorbed into the crowds and the bloodlust and we come to cheer for Shawn.

That the fighting scenes are the best in a movie called Fighting is rather the way it should be. That the performances in and around the fights are so intriguing and compelling is a pleasant surprise. Director Dito Montiel infuses life and energy throughout all of Fighting and not just the fight scenes.

So, why do we get to the end and feel so astonishingly short changed? It's truly bizarre. It's as if the production stopped paying screenwriter Robert Munic 2/3's the way through filming and were forced to just make up the rest as they went along. That is literally how slipshod the final scenes of Fighting play. The compromised storytelling is so bad I can't recommend this otherwise exceptionally well made B-movie.

What a shame.

Movie Review Stomp the Yard

Stomp the Yard (2007) 

Directed by Sylvain White 

Written by Gregory Anderson

Starring Columbus Short, Meagan Good, Ne-Yo, Darrin Henson, Brian White, Laz Alonzo, Harry Lennix

Release Date January 12th, 2007

Published January 16th, 2007 

MTV Films has pioneered a new kind of filmmaking. It's a low budget, high teen appeal style that involves formula stories about young protagonists and killer soundtracks that drive the film's marketing. It began with the dance drama Save The Last Dance and continued through the surprise 2004 dance hit You Got Served. The new movie Stomp The Yard is not an MTV film but it follows the MTV Films business plan. Made on the cheap, with a killer hip hop soundtrack and cameos by hip hop stars, Stomp The Yard made its budget back over the opening weekend.

That is great for business but the formula filmmaking is tired and the cheapness shows in the low quality of the filmmaking. Stomp The Yard may have youth appeal but it lacks greatly in story and filmmaking appeal. 

In Stomp The Yard Columbus Short plays D.J, a wrong side of the tracks kid from the L.A streets who finds himself in college in Atlanta after the violent death of his brother Duron. At Truth University his hard ass uncle Nate works on the campus landscaping and had to pull every string imaginable to get D.J in. Once there, D.J's culture shock includes a crash course in stepping, a dance competition among historic African American fraternities.

D.J knows how to step, he and his late brother and a team of friends were battle dancers back in L.A before Duron was killed after a competition. Now in Atlanta, D.J is shy about getting into stepping but after showing off for a girl in a bar, D.J becomes a hot commodity among the top two frats on campus, who also happen to be the top two stepping frats in the country.

The girl D.J danced for is April (Meagan Goode) and she happens to be the girlfriend of a top stepper, Grant (Darrin Henson) and the daughter of the school provost. If you think both of these attributes will be laid out as romantic obstacles and then easily overcome, then you have likely seen a few of these formula films in the past. Indeed, those on the wrong side of the tracks always seem to get the girl, especially when the upper crust of society forbids it.

There are few clichés that Stomp The Yard doesn't stomp all over on the way to its rote conclusion. Director Sylvain White, like most directors of January filler material, isn't so much a director as he is a vessel for transporting this cliché ridden script to the screen with little innovation. His style choices are sloppy and he seems to have no interest in the story beyond the opportunities it offers to film elaborate dance scenes.

Throughout Stomp The Yard White opts for a shaky handheld camera work that is sloppy and distracting, especially during the dance scenes where the camerawork makes you doubt just how spectacular the dancing really is. Throughout the film there are confusing scenes where one person or a team dances and one is alleged to be better than the other but we have no idea why. Each side is precise and athletic, even charismatic, but why one is better than the other is left completely subjective to individual taste. The way these scenes are put together however, it seems like we are supposed to understand that one side has been shown up, but for the life of me I had no idea why.

There is an interesting idea buried beneath the retread plot of Stomp The Yard. A movie that focuses its energy on why stepping is so venerated and why it is such a marvelous tradition. Stomp The Yard simply wishes for us to assume stepping is an important part of the culture, it never bothers to explain why. An education in the styles and grading of stepping might make an interesting movie or a better documentary.

For an education in battle dancing, more specifically a battle between krumping and clowning, check out David LaChappelle's documentary Rize. That film is gorgeously shot with no cuts during the dance scenes to prove that indeed no tricks were used, these dancers really did those amazing things. The crew of Stomp The Yard could have learned a lot watching Rize.

As it is, it seems that the Stomp The Yard crew watched how successful the clichés of 2005's You Got Served worked as a business model and simply copied them with slightly less skill. Yes, Stomp The Yard makes You Got Served look better by comparison. That is really saying something.