Movie Reviews: Diary of Mad Black Woman/There Eyes were watching God

Basically if you're black and you live in the south you have heard of Tyler Perry, and if you were born and raised in the church in the south, you own DVD's of all of his plays. For those of you who don't know, I'll give you a brief refresher course. Tyler Perry is a man who at one point lived in his car because he wanted to follow his dream of putting on stage plays that included positive Christian messages, and his plays usually include a character where he dresses up in drag and waves a gun around being silly. These plays are commonly referred to as the "chitlin circuit" plays, and most of the time they have titles like, "mama, I lost my gun" or "mama, I stole something but I forgot what it is". You get my drift...

You see, in these parts, Tyler is a phenomenon. When he puts on that dress and those fake breasts people come out in droves. His DVD's are never in stock and the tickets to his plays sell out within the first week. Me, being the perceived snob that I am had not ever heard of Madea or his plays, and when I did my exact reaction was, "I'm not seeing that ghetto shit." One fateful day at my uncle's house during Thanksgiving, we had no cable or movies, but my aunt is on the mailing list for Tyler Perry's whole collection and she brought them all. As much as I didn't want to, I actually enjoyed them. Except for the fact that people tend to break out in bad gospel songs every five minutes, there a hoot. Needless to say, Tyler Perry is hilarious. So when I found out that Diary of a Mad Black Woman was being made into a movie, deep, deep down on the inside I was excited. But, of course, I didn't tell anybody.

Also, because of the "bougie" perception that I carry, I don't like a lot of black movies. A lot of them just straight up suck. They also insult black people's intelligence. My best friend tells me that I hate black movies because I'm act like a white girl. But since I am a movie buff, everyone deserves a fair shot. Hell, I even enjoyed Friday after Next; so how white could I be.

So now that brings me to Diary of a Mad Black Woman. My initial thought was that I didn't think that the movie would translate very well to screen, and low and behold I was correct. I liked the fact that Tyler Perry did not compromise his vision and kept his christian messages in the movie that were actually spoken by the characters, instead of hiding them behind subtle undertones. I also liked the fact that Madea kept the same spirit as she did in the plays, but other than that, it was equivalent to a really bad soap opera. Your distracted most of the time by Kimberly Elise's and Shemar Moore's horrible wigs, and there is some really good talent here that is wasted on a badly written script. And when I say bad, I mean bad. Like the "canceled soap opera Generations from back in day" bad.

So Oprah decided to make a movie out of one of my favorite books, They're eyes were watching God. And she decided to cast one of my favoritist actresses in the whole world, Ms. Halle Berry!!!(is that sarcasm obvious enough? If not here's clarification, Halle berry can't act worth a damn). I like Oprah because she really doesn't promote anything that she doesn't put her heart and soul into. And even though Beloved was a shit mess, she spoke about it as if her child was made fun of in kindergarten by the other children.
Plus, that woman has damn good taste in books. I digress...

Anyway, I really wasn't expecting very much of they're eyes were watching God. But I actually thought the movie was pretty good. It wasn't rushed, the acting for the most part was decent (except when halle over emotes, I hate that), and the story held up really well. This book is fantastic, and you can't fuck up the movie or people will crucify will you for it. So I have to give props to Miss Oprah and Miss Halle. You two work very well together. Also, what's up to Michael Ealy, when you and Halle break up (which you will because that hoe has isssues), call me, I'm in the book.