Tyler Perry is back in the saddle. Did you miss him?
If you remember my post “10 Things Tyler Perry Could Be Doing“, you know that Tyler Perry seemed to be out of theaters for longer than usual. Well now we know what he was doing: Good Deeds.
I have been highly critical of Tyler Perry’s shenanigans in the past, but I will give him a bit of credit and say that Good Deeds wasn’t at all the normal n*ggerdom we expect from Mr. Perry. That’s not to say is was a great film. It is to say that there was an absence of many of his staples. These “staples” include but are not limited to: cross-dressing, neck rolling, dead beat dads, abusive fiances, evil successful women, broke & muscular men who love Jesus, aunties who quote scripture, loud baby mamas, emasculating spouses, and so on and so forth. There wasn’t really any of that, which was refreshing. It was kind of like a Lifetime movie (as evidenced by the fact that my aunt and I cried real tears).
That being said, here’s my first 10 Thoughts on Good Deeds.
- Gabrielle Union continues to seem annoying as fuck and play herself in every movie, but her skin is flawless. It is made of cocoa butter and Godiva chocolate.
- I am EXTREMELY uncomfortable seeing Tyler Perry be “sexy”. Sooooooo uncomfortable. I do not want to see Madea have sex. DO NOT WANT TYLER PERRY SEX FACES!!!!!! Watching him have sex with Gabrielle Union is like watching Ellen Degeneres have sex with Idris Elba. It’s just……. ewww. No mas!
- Thandie Newton is a really good actress. Her decision to co-star in Norbit aside, I actually bought her as a struggling single mom. She was way more believable as a poor black women than Angela Basset was in ‘Meet the Browns’. And Thandie isn’t even American. Throughout the movie it was very apparent that she is a much better actress than anyone else on screen. Second best was probably the little girl who played her daughter.
- If I was broke, the last place I would live is San Francisco. That’s worse than being broke in NYC.
- My consistent problem with Tyler is all his characters are one-note. The villains are all bad, all the time. The good guys are all good all the time. That is what we have here. His brother in the movie is an asshole at all times. Honestly, no one has the energy to be negative every waking moment of their life. Even the worst people smile at some point in a given week. So a little more personality to some of the supporting roles would have been nice. I can’t even imagine what Gabrielle’s character description in the script was. She had no character traits except she knew her fiance’s habits.
- Tyler Perry is really trying to cross over. He was sure to cast white folks as the friends of these saditty black characters. He also strategically places white folk music on the soundtrack. Not so white that the average negro would say WTF, but white enough to make white folks comfortable. Honestly, all the people could have been white and the film would been the same. He even changed locations from the blackest city on earty (Atlanta) to the non-blackest city on earth (San Francisco).
- There is no way in hell this lady and her daughter have passports. They can’t just up and go to Africa. Besides, “Africa’s far”. #shoutout to T-Boz.
- Why is Tupac’s “How Do You Want It” the song you get your groove back to? Do single moms in their 30s really listen to Makaveli on their iPod? Wait… I’m damn near 30 myself… fuck.
- We are not in Atlanta this time…… but we do have a random fashion show to attend. LOL.
- I hate Brian White’s face. This may or may not be related to the fact that every time I see it, I think about how he’s married to a 2520 chick… but whatever.
So what did you guys think? Do I get kicked out of the Uppity Negro Society for not hating it?
