For Colored Girls

On request from Johnathan, I was asked to use this space to review movies.  However this seems to be a little hard from a war zone.  Lucky him, I was in the states this past week, and I was able to view the long awaited Tyler Perry "Masterpiece"  For Colored Girls. 

I am usually the one who has her head stuck in a book, reading the lovely limricks or sojourn journeys of men and women who are unable to tell his or her own story.  However, For Colored Girls, I have never read the book/poems nor have I seen the play.  Though I have heard of it, I never had the chance or even the motivation to read it.  So this for me is a first, seeing a movie for before reading the book.  OH HOW I WISH I READ THE BOOK FIRST OR WAS BORN IN 1960 SO I COULD GO SEE THE PLAY!!!

I watched this movie, and to it's credit, it was definitely better than, "I Can Do Bad All By Myself."  An though many men feel that this was a movie ragging on black men, it's not.  It's not a pity movie about women talking about how bad men are, or how bad her baby's daddy is.  This movie addresses issues women encountered in the 1970s as well as 2010.  Amazing, how issues that were once taboo in the 1970s are just strewn across a movie screen in 2010.  Eight stories of women's plight, poverty, self esteem, fear, incest, and down low games are the movie's streaming undertones.  Tough topics for one movie to handle in 120 minutes.  However, Tyler tried.  Though the movie is sometimes "weird" meaning, in one second the women are having a regular conversations and then in the next reciting a poem sometimes feels misplaced and irrepresentative of what the true meaning of the poem was suppose to be about.  The movie was still entertaining.  Not as heavy as Precious where I balled my eyes out, but not to light where you don't get anything from it.  As much as Tyler tried to make this movie like the Hollywood Hits Chicago, and Rent, it wasn't.  And probably should not have been.

Even so, the movie relayed a good message.  One that all women can relate too.  This movie is not for the ignorant.  And I address this comment to the woman in the movie theater who kept calling this man a faggot, practically ruining my last day in DC.  Yes, there is a down low brother.  Yes the implied consequence of this is HIV.  However, living in the 21st Century, ADULTS should be able to handle a Rated-R movie which handles issues such as this.  Maybe this is why homosexual men don't come out, because of the fear of the tirade that a black woman may inflict on him when he comes out.  Any way, I digress.  At the tender age of 27, I can only recount the many times I fell in and out of love.  Or the one time, I thought I was pregnant, and had to come up with a plan.  The point is, all women, not just black women, but all women can relate to some theme in this movie.  Every woman knows a friend who was raped by a family member or friend.  Everyone woman has a friend or was that woman in an abusive relationship.  And every woman has made mistakes that lead to some type of defining consequence her life.  These are the scars that women carry around with them.  That many men don't know of. 

This was a good movie.  A stellar cast with Whoopie and Thandie opposing each other as mother and daughter kept me on the edge of my seat.  Lorretta Devine played the comical character that all of us wish we had the strength to be when realizing the end of a horrible relationship.  Kerry Washington and Kimberly Elise Neal played strong characters.  Anika Rose was awesome as the exuberant dancer betrayed.  And Janet Jackson tried.

Is there a reason why Janet must play the typical angry black women.  I mean honestly, did anyone believe that she really tore up her own house in Why Did I Get Married II?  I didn't.  I have homegirls back on the block that could have done it more convincingly.  Why is she the poster child for angry black women??!!!  Okay, that is all I have...

Love ya