Change Your Image
scoot99
Reviews
Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)
Mad about "Mad"
First of all, let me lay my cards on the table. (Poker, anyone?) I am white, male, nonchristian, over 40, college-educated, and live in the northeast. I'm old enough to remember the original "Diary of a Mad Housewife" and when "Miss Jane Pittman" first aired, and I have done the electric slide, lived in the south (never been to Atlanta, but love Georgia), and have attended barbecues--but know very little about the "chitlin circuit." Yet I (and the two white friends I went with) loved this movie!
As I see it, people who have witnessed this movie can be divided into two camps: 1) reviewers (probably mostly white) who disliked the movie even when they tried to like it and 2) ordinary people (mostly probably black, as many tell us) who loved it. So why do many apparently white viewers not "get it"? Why did I see it in my mostly white area with only about five other people in the audience?
Well, a lot of people didn't like "Showgirls" or "Carwash" or "Lonely Lady" when they first came out, and now those are cult hits, even "classics." "Diary" is only like those movies in that it is similarly over-the-top, unapologetic, irony-free, awkward, amateurish (that is, not slick), and yet so intrinsically watchable you can't take your eyes of the screen for a split second. I must admit that I probably laughed at some "inappropriate" moments, but then so did Madea. The whole faith-based initiative Christian-values quasi-Republican "message" might have made me wince or even gag in another context, but is delivered so sincerely here you can't help but forgive just as Jesus (or Helen!) would.
One could only call this movie operatic or "Shakespearian." Wait--I'm not trying to sound pretentious, only trying to point out that like Shakespeare this movie mixes high melodrama with "low" comedic relief, music, and spectacle. The comic actors comment upon and undercut the ultra-seriousness or piety of the rest of the story--and so we can only enjoy it more when the plot rides another twist on its emotional roller-coaster.
Tyler Perry is obviously a man with a vision--he doesn't have the finesse of Eddie Murphy, perhaps, but I admit I was halfway through the movie before I realized he was playing both Madea and old Joe AND Brian. My fear is now that he will be sucked in by Hollywood, the executives will convince him to deliver what they think white people want or "need," and he will lose his rough but raucous magic. So when Hollywood comes knocking, please don't answer, Mr. Perry!
When I went into this movie I was grumbling that ticket prices had gone up to ten dollars, but since we are given about five films for the price of one, I consider it a very good deal. It is simply one of the most astonishing movies I've ever seen.
Le divorce (2003)
Le Stinkeroo
Spoiler Alert As I am sure many others do, I rely on the Internet Movie Database for quick, detailed information about movies I am interested in either seeing or learning more about. However, I have never before felt the need to add my voice to its roaring choir of reviews-there are more than enough of those in the world, amateur and professional, aren't there? Le Divorce has, nevertheless compelled me to post my comments here not so much out of a desire to express my opinion but to provide a public service, which in this case feels more like my humanitarian duty. First of all, for any of those who saw the trailer, as I did, this is about as blatant a case of false advertising as I've ever seen. In that preview, the movie looks silly but fun, probably a little stupid yet also doubtlessly entertaining, since the cast is a large and able one and the setting-Paris-rarely doesn't look good in a mainstream movie. Be warned: this movie is anything but a bouncy, frothy romantic farce with a French accent, as its promotion might lead you to believe. By the end of the movie we are left with an attempted suicide, a double murder, insanity, and other such `sexy' subject matter to deal with; all of these ingredients might be amusing in a more sophisticated, more original film, but here they are as treated with maddening ineptitude. I can't recall when I was ever so appalled by a movie, even one made in Hollywood. If you're thinking that's just my opinion, others liked it, just read the other reviews below-think again. I attended this movie with three friends, all who disliked it equally if not more than I did, and judging from the crowd in the theater, I doubt if many people there liked it at all. In a movie billed as a comedy, I heard very, very little laughter in that audience, and then usually at awkward moments that make most people cough or cringe or laugh nervously. Having seen a large crowd leaving the theater after the 7:00 show in an unusually silent mood (odd for an audience who's just seen a comedy), I supposed I shouldn't have been so surprised. Just two nights ago I saw Pretty Dirty Things, a movie about illegal immigrants so desperate they will sell their body organs just for a passport, and that audience wasn't half so grim. Hell, by the time this movie was half over I would've sold my liver to make it stop. Where do I begin in describing a movie so bad it made me so angry that I am writing this review instead of sleeping? Let's begin on a positive note: the movie does have a couple of fairly nice montages: one of the myriad ways Parisian women wear scarves, the other of a parade of Nouvelle Cuisine dishes. The intent in both cases was probably to make the French look, as ever, frivolous and foolish, but the result only intrigues us. Had Merchant and Ivory only stuck to such pointed but harmless humor! Instead, the movie is so relentlessly xenophobic that I wonder if Donald Rumsfeld could have been one of its shadow producers, or if it was hastily revised after this year's episodes of Americans spilling French wine into gutters. That, I suppose, would have been impossible, but no matter what your politics are, you will find very little to like in this movie about a corner of `Old Europe.' Leslie Caron, out of retirement, is also quite good, but in a thankless part where she must betray her mother country by portraying a character who makes French matrons look worse than George W.'s portrait of Saddam. I pity her for the reception she'll get back home, should any French audience ever be subjected to this movie (in a future prison camp?). And that's about all I can think of to say in this movie's favor. Of course, most of the actors do credible jobs-they're professionals, after all-but each and every one of them should be kicking his or her agent for getting them into this mess in the first place. You haven't seen such wasted talent of a large cast since of those big disaster flicks of the '70s, though here the disaster is the screenplay and direction. I haven't read the novel from which this movie is derived, but I daresay it must have had something going for it, some sort of breezy charm which this movie utterly lacks, for it to have inspired this fiasco in the first place. Let's consider politics and morals next: the movie's central figure, Kate Hudson, is inexplicably drawn to her French brother-in-law's uncle, even though he has already been presented to us as a right-wing ideologue who haphazardly advocates bombing other countries (sound familiar? and since when have the French been considered warmongers after the far right in this country has assured us they're all fops and chickens?), someone who Kate's character's sister says would like to blow up the lefty charitable organization she's associated with. (That charity's main purpose, it has been pointed out to me, was apparently to distribute expensive cosmetics to the poor.) Yet Kate Hudson's character is attracted enough to become this man's mistress. I'll allow that; at least it makes an otherwise blank character more interesting. All along we're expecting her to wise up, though, and somehow trick her much older French lover in order to help both families (it's a complicated plot, and a dull one). But such a turnabout never comes, and we are left with the driest breakup scene on record, nothing satisfactory ever having happened to Kate's character except the viewer discovering that this apparently winsome innocent is thoroughly without any moral convictions-or originality. That is only the tip of this Titanic iceberg, though that legendary disaster pales beside this cinematic one. The plot really is too complex to unravel here, dealing as it does with the messy divorce of the title, the aforementioned murders and such, a clueless California family who make the Clampetts in Beverly Hills look world-weary and knowing, and a de la Tour painting that know one cares about no matter how much Bebe Neuwirth tries in her role as a museum curator. Oh, yes, and we also get Matthew Modine as a spurned husband who for some reason targets his wife's lover's wife and sister. (If you can figure that one out, you're doing better than poor Mr. Modine was able to do with his execrable role.) Along the way we have every French cliche in the book, from accordions to the Eiffel Tower (and I'm sure there must have been some baguettes and mimes, too, but I was probably covering my eyes with embarrassment). A disclaimer here-I once spent most of a summer in France and somehow found them no more offensive than Canadians. This would be a very long review indeed if I were to detail the many, many objections one might have to its multitudinous characters and subplots. Let's look briefly at just one, though: Glenn Close, who's presented to us as a famous, sophisticated American writer living in Paris, though we never get an inkling of what kind of writer or why the Parisians are so mad about someone who is incapable of speaking more than a couple of words of French in public. She, too, has once had the French near-Neo-Nazi as a lover, something she seems less to regret than to long for wistfully from afar. And though she is younger than Susan Sontag she has already donated her papers to the University of Tulsa (!), presumably because she is so awfully important. Is this anything like reality? Possibly, but it seems less and less real as we watch her on the screen. But, really, I quibble-that character is not that important to the movie; in fact, none of the characters or plots are important to this movie: only French-bashing is. That would be all right if we saw the Americans taking it on the chin, too, but we seldom if ever do; instead the Americans (and one English man) are held out to us as paragons of at least attempted virtue while we are subjected to everything from prissy attitudes toward cheese to bloody stag-hunting with hounds-both topics having risen out of nothing at the same dinner party and having nothing whatsoever to do with plot or character. One wonders what odorous French language courses Messrs. Merchant and Ivory attended to develop such attitudes. Oh, but they are English (or English immigrants), and as Stephen Fry's character is there to underscore for us, the English detest the French, of course. And being Americans, we should side with the English and they with us. Sounding familiar once again? I was so infuriated by this movie that immediately after I got home from seeing it I skated around the Internet looking at reviews. Most of them were surprisingly lukewarm-high praise for a movie such as this-but only one, from The Chicago Tribune, came close to describing what a painful experience this movie is. And at two hours, it's a long, painful experience. I would have walked out, something I probably wouldn't do even at Affleck and Lopez's Gigli, if it hadn't been for my sick desire to see how much carnage they could drag out of the wreckage. I wouldn't be surprised if I were less offended by Mel Gibson's Passion. (At least I don't understand enough Latin or Aramaic to catch the nuances, while I might be able to interpret a tiny bit of French.) Here's my idea for a tag-line: `This movie stinks more than Pepe Le Pew ever dreamt of!'
When my friends and I left the movie theater-or staggered out after the shock, I should say-I felt as murderous as Matthew Modine's character, who shoots two people, apparently at the Eiffel Tower, and manages to dump one body blocks if not miles away in broad daylight in a very congested city without anyone noticing until it's too late. I felt murderous, all right, and the first on my list are the writers and directors and producers of this smouldering pile of merde.