HOLLYWOOD—Filmmaker Tyler Perry has made some solid movies in my opinion, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” and “Why Did I Get Married?” to name a few, but his latest outing “Tyler Perry’s Divorce in the Black” is not one of those flicks. Why might you ask? There are too many gaps and loose ends in the movie, which feels more like an elongated TV episode than an actual movie.
The film stars Meagan Goode and Cory Hardrict as a married couple, where it is very obvious from the opening that all is not blissful. Goode appears to come from a family that has a bit of money and is quite religious. How does the audience know? Her father, Clarence (Richard Lawson) is a preacher and he’s married to Gene (Debbie Morgan). I will admit Lawson and Morgan do great work with the material that is given to them as Ava’s (Goode) parents, but I just wish the rest of the story was stronger for the actors.
Hardrict portrays Dallas, a man of very few words, but with a temper that can be set off by the slightest thing. Perry gives the audience slight hints into Dallas’ temper, but we never fully understand what provokes him and what troubling incident in his childhood has continued to haunt him. We know it has something to do with his father, but we never get the actual answers to our questions.
That is the primary issue with “Tyler Perry’s Divorce in the Black” we are teased things, but we never get the answers to those questions. I mean how can you have a husband cheat on his wife, but we don’t further explore the other woman and the role in the melee? Why aren’t there flashbacks or at least some sort of evidence of all the terrible things that Dallas has done to Ava shown to the audience? What is so wicked about Dallas, his brothers, and his vicious mother, Linda, that is not further explored.
Linda (Ursula O. Robinson) is an interesting character, because she feels evil to the core and has a chokehold on her sons when it comes to them doing what she tells them with no questions asked. She is a very brief character. We see her presence in the opening, then another scene and after that she becomes an afterthought. Sorry, she was way more compelling than the character Jim portrayed by Shannon Wallace, who feels like a lost player.
Ok, he’s Dallas’ bestie, but feels like a pushover to his wife, Rona (Taylor Polidore), who is quite intriguing. She says what she means and is thinking like the spectator watching the movie. I loved her, while so many other characters just feel flat and underdeveloped. Yes, Ava and Dallas ultimately move towards a divorce as the title notes, and she rekindles things with a former love Benji (Joseph Lee Anderson), who gets a second chance. The problem, the audience doesn’t know much about their love affair and you ask the question WHY?
Perry fails to give the audience what we want to actually invest and care about these characters. What is worst is the ending. The ending just almost made me throw something at the screen because it feels unfinished and gives no finality. Look, you can have endings that are not happy with a bow placed on it, but this just feels like, “who cares.” Quite a disappointment for a flick that if thoroughly fleshed out with less characters and more development it could have been a solid movie.
