Tyler Perry — multi tasking movie maker– has never been a critics’ darling. But still…
For some reason, two weeks ahead of schedule, the Hollywood trade papers decided to murder Perry’s new movie this morning.
Perry adapted Ntozake Shange‘s “For Colored Girls,” with an all star cast featuring Janet Jackson, Phylicia Rashad, and Thandie Newton. The original play was a string of poems that depicted the lives of black women in the 1970s.
The movie doesn’t open until November 5th–in two weeks– but still both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter published their reviews today. And they killed it. Kirk Honeycutt, the famed Reporter reviewer, called “For Colored Girls” — “a train wreck.”
The Variety reviewer didn’t like it, but no one can read that review since it’s behind a pay wall. He said it was a step back for Perry, but that it was also ambitious. But then he also said it very bad.
So much for awards attention, etc. But the question is, why go out so early just to kill this film? And, really, it’s the only film this Oscar season with black actors. Unlike last year, with “Precious,” this Oscar season is pretty much a white wedding. Even “The Social Network” casts a Latin American character with a British actor.
But the studio must have wanted early publicity. This week Perry appeared on “Oprah” in a quasi-psychiatric session that instead of promoting the movie, turned into an exploration of how he’d been abused as a child. It was terrible for Perry, and maybe helpful to those in the audience. But the oversharing didn’t do much to promote the movie per se.
