Not Quite Wright

Just Wright, the new movie produced and starring Queen Latifa, plays like a not-so-special episode of Livin' Single, her sitcom that ran on FOX from 1993-1998. Latifa plays Leslie Wright, a 30ish, "big bone-ed," good ol' girl who is looking for love but continually finds herself in the "friend zone." Yet, full of pluck (if not much luck) Leslie sallies forth bright-eyed and bushy tailed, always leading with her big heart.

Leslie is a variation on Georgia Byrd the character Latifa played in Last Holiday but with much smaller dreams. Leslie is content with her job as a physical therapist, her old-and-busted mustard-colored Mustang and the big old house she is rehabing with the help of her father (Grey's Anatomy's James Pickens, Jr.). A chance meeting with Scott McKnight (Common), all-star point guard of the New Jersey Nets changes everything.

The casting, with the probable exception of Common (he is just tall enough to be almost believable as an NBA star) , is spot on - Pickens as Leslie's father, Pam (Coffy) Grier as her mother, Phylicia (The Cosby Show) Rashad as Common's mother and Paula (Precious) Patton as Leslie's gold-digging friend - but, with the exception of Common and Patton, this great cast is given precious little to do.

The core of the movie, the aftermath of McKnight suffering a possibly career-ending knee injury during the NBA All-Star game (improbably played at the Izod Center in New Jersey), should be his grueling rehabilitation under physical therapist Leslie's stern but capable hands, but is, instead, soft and shapeless, giving us none of the blood, sweat and tears this intense enterprise should engender.

Director Sanaa Hamri ((Something New) exhibits zero flair for framing NBA action. One wonders if she has actually seen a pro basketball game. The climatic basketball game in Teen Wolf has more dramatic tension than the game seven we-need-a-three-pointer-to-win snoozer that ushers in Wright's final act. And speaking of said game seven, we are given no sense of how this team (the Nets - Really?) has advanced to the NBA Eastern Conference finals without the "Great Scott," their biggest star, and we are given no insight into how McKnight feels about his team being so successful without him.

While most of the rom-com conventions are here, Just Wright remains sluggish in execution and lacking in drama. You sit there and you long for Hamri to set-off a Tyler Perry-esque emotional firecracker. Anything to ignite this languid enterprise.

Just Wright is anything but.

~(no)rave!

Tyler Perry Land

Tyler Perry Land is a piece of intellectual property as valuable and deep-seeded as Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville. It ain't real estate but it is where Mr. Perry's characters live. So you can complain of false motivations and false emotions if you want while Why Did I Get Married Too?, Tyler Perry's latest opus, mines the same lucrative vein of middle-brow humor and angst he has worked for years.

The gang's all here from Why Did I Get Married only it is four years later and the locale for confrontations and shocking revelations has moved from the snow white of Colorado to the white sand of the Bahamas. There has been much adding and subtracting. Dianne (Sharon Leal) had relented and given Terry (Tyler Perry) the son he desperately wanted while Sheila (Jill Scott) has traded up from Mike (Richard T. Jones) to Troy (Lamman Rucker) and made Troy a proud papa, too (Officer Troy's deep well of bed-rock confidence, so appealing in WDIGM, was apparently left in Colorado when he and Sheila relocated to Atlanta so she could be closer to her family and friends). Meanwhile, Marcus' (Michael Jai White) career is on the ascent while Angela's (Tasha Smith) has been buffeted by the recession. The only couple maintaining status quo appears to be Patricia (Janet Jackson) and Gavin (Malik Yoba).

The wheres and whys of a Tyler Perry plot are often too tortuous, ridiculous and/or fantastic to repeat but he understands how to play his peculiar and particular audience, cueing up tears, laughter, hoots of recognition all the while retaining the ability to shock if not surprise. Perry's plays taught him how to please an audience, how to clown like a master and how to move people with jokes and a song. It is a stage savvy; a performer's savvy. In years of relentless touring with his self-authored and self-financed plays, Perry has learned and honed a craft.

~rave!

Mama Madea

Ghetto auteur Tyler Perry is about to unleash his latest man-in-
drag epic, Madea Goes To Jail, on what will probably be a very
receptive world.

The most charitable thing you can say about the best of Tyler's
oeuvre (Why Did We Get Married? for instance) is that is was
better than his worse (Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Daddy's
Girls). Typically, he violates every rule of well constructed
narrative or accomplished film making. His best work (Married?)
is merely competent. Yet, Perry has legions of devoted fans and
is steadily approaching Oprahville in lifetime earnings.

I do salute Perry for giving work to worthy and woefully under-
employed black actresses - Alfre Woodard, Sanaa Lathan, Academy
Award nominee Taraji P. Henson and Robin Givens to just name
those in his last movie (The Family that Preys).

Lastly, I have come to the conclusion that the audience is never
wrong. It is always the artists' fault when they fail to connect with
an audience. So I watch all of Tyler Perry's movies (I own The
Family That Preys but haven't watched it yet) trying to discern what
his audience is connecting with - and, attempting to learn something,
seeing if I can apply those lessons effectively without debasing my
own work.

There are simple verities in this world and sometimes we, as artists,
willfully ignore them.