From the Wow archive, he just keeps producing content comes from Tyler Perry’s porce in the black eraa pseudo-psycho-thriller that is the media mogul’s first film in his recent deal with Amazon Prime VideoNot only is Perry astonishingly prolific, writing, producing, and directing TV series and films at a frenzied pace for a large and devoted audience, but he now simultaneously produces content for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, the highly competitive behemoths of the current Cold War between streaming services. Did I mention he also opened his own independent studio in Atlanta and is a multimillionaire? Perry’s accomplishments are astonishing, truly, and that extends to the ridiculousness of the melodramas he churns out seemingly in large quantities—this one stars Meagan Good as a long-suffering woman who eventually porces her serial-jerk husband, with predictably absurd, very Tyler Perry-esque results. I don’t know, maybe it will inspire a few laughs, intentional or not (but most likely otherwise).
TYLER PERRY’S DIVORCE IN BLACKSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: We open with a funeral for Ava’s (good) brother-in-law. She married into the Bertrand family, a bunch of slackers who have long been feuding with her parents, preacher-farmer Clarence (Richard Lawson) and devout lady-of-God Gene (Debbi Morgan). So Ava’s marriage to Dallas (Cory Hardrict) must be a real Montague-Capulet situation, right? Uh, I don’t know about that. She convinced the Bertrands to let Clarence lead the eulogy, during which he pretty much outright says the deceased knight is going to eat fire and brimstone for all eternity. That was the end of all the fuss and bickering. All Ava can do is cringe and hold her hand to her face as the Bertrands get so angry that they remove the body from the coffin so they can bury their son where he belongs, right outside their filthy trailer, past all the old mattresses and carcasses of dead cars and assorted trash in the yard.
And it’s not like Ava and Dallas’ love is particularly star-crossed. They moved to Atlanta from rural Georgia to live a life of happiness, but it didn’t work out that way. She got a good job doing whatever at a big bank, and Dallas just drinks, smokes, beats, and psychologically abuses her. And now—get this—HE’s the one who wants a porce. It goes against everything Ava learned from her parents, who stuck it out through thick and thin, rich or poor, hot or cold, smelly or not, poop on the bottom of your shoe or no poop on the bottom of your shoe. She’s wracked with guilt. Dallas storms out the door, and she goes back home to Clarence and Gene for a while, staying in her perfectly preserved childhood bedroom that still has the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air posters above the bed. As a reminder of how awful everything has been for so many years, his best friend and co-worker Rona (Taylor Polidore) wrote down all the terrible things Dallas did, and she did it in very small print, with tight margins and everything. The guy is a real perv.
Clarence and Gene are supportive of the split, so much so that they pair her up with their old friend Benji (Joseph Lee Anderson), a porced farmer who seems capable of carrying half-ton steers on each shoulder without breaking the Right Guard seal on a single armpit. This relationship with Benji is when Dallas gets mad at the woman he’s porcing for “cheating” on him, which only makes sense if you’re more of a plot device than a man. Prior to this, Dallas disappeared for an hour-long stretch of the movie mercilessly while Ava mopes around and thinks about sleeping with Benji, but doesn’t, but eventually does, because she has to in order for this plot to reach ridiculous speed and get to Tyler Perry’s inevitable signature insanity finale. All of his “serious” movies conclude this way, you know. It’s right up there with death and taxes.
What movies will it remind you of? Let’s say that this is not entirely the case. Marriage storyHell, it isn’t even! A Madea Halloween.
Performance worth watching: Add Good to the growing group of talented and capable actresses (see also: Taraji P. Henson, Alfre Woodard, Kelly Rowland, Crystal Fox) who power through some of the harshest, most jerky dialogue ever.
Memorable dialogue: Benji offers Ava some reassurance and gives us some self-deprecating laughs with this awkward exchange:
Benji: I know what it’s like. The anger, the betrayal, all of it. One minute you’re strong and the next you’re staring into the bottom of a whiskey bottle and listening to Chris Stapleton’s song “Either Way.”
Ava: I’ve never heard of it.
Sex and skin: There are no naughty bits or butts to be seen, but at least we have one of the clumsiest sex scenes ever filmed.
Our opinion: And at least one of the clumsiest sex scenes ever filmed is immediately followed by one of the clumsiest fight scenes ever filmed. They make for a pretty good sequence, an ineptly executed mess that finally, at last, breaks the tension Perry has spent 90 minutes clumsily trying to create. Nearly two decades of a career as a film director hasn’t taught him anything new about the craft, but the billion dollars in his bank account has allowed him to not worry that people will watch this garbage anyway. It’s one big feedback loop he’s created for himself.
And yet, Divorce in the black – a meaningless title, by the way – never really reaches the level of reheated, bake-a-single-cookie-burn-down-the-kitchen dramatic absurdity that Perry gave us in films like A fall from grace, My faulteither Why I got married toowhich showed us how thin the line between melodrama and comedy can be. It tames the bull in the china shop and ends with a dull exploration of poorly formed characters who manage to survive their banal existences in Very Expensive Houses. All we can do is sit there and wait for it all to work itself out. blow In typical Perry fashion, and when he finally does, it’s two miserable sparks on the 4th of July, and one of them backfires. And to get to that, we have to suffer through a script devoid of logic where you’ll be thirsty for a shred of common sense. The only way to get through it is to drink every time someone on screen does something stupid. You’ll be drunk in no time.
Our calling: You already know what to expect from a Tyler Perry concert. But Divorce in the black It’s not as fun as you’d like. It doesn’t derail like a memorable train wreck, but instead plummets onto the tracks. What a disappointment. SAVE IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
