I’m not sure if it’s surprising that the film is almost uniformly awful.
Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:106
Fresh:17
Rotten:89
Average Rating:3.9/10
Consensus: Tyler Perry's successful play can't make the move to the screen; this mix of slapstick, melodrama and spirituality lacks a consistent tone.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for drug content, thematic elements, crude sexual references and some violence
Runtime: 1 hr 56 mins
Genre: Television
Theatrical Release:Feb 25, 2005 Wide
Box Office: $50,382,128
Synopsis: Filled with a mix of comedy and drama, the film Diary of a Mad Black Woman is based on the immensely popular play of the same name written by Tyler Perry. The story focuses on Helen McCarter... Filled with a mix of comedy and drama, the film Diary of a Mad Black Woman is based on the immensely popular play of the same name written by Tyler Perry. The story focuses on Helen McCarter (Kimberly Elise), who has seemingly had the perfect life with husband Charles McCarter (Steve Harris). Over the years, Helen has been a faithful and loving wife, while Charles built a successful and lucrative career as a prominent Atlanta attorney. They wear the latest fashions, drive the nicest cars, have all the possessions they need, and they live on an expansive estate complete with an extravagant mansion, swimming pool, tennis court and all the trappings of wealth – a little piece of paradise away from the city. However, on the eve of their 18th wedding anniversary, Helen’s paradise begins to crumble as Charles announces that he wants a divorce. He abruptly and literally tosses Helen out of the mansion to make room for the other woman. With all of her possessions packed in a moving van, Helen starts on her journey to put the pieces of her life back together. Through the assistance of her friends, family, faith, and a twist of fate, Helen finds the strength and empowerment she needs to get control of her circumstances. She also finds that the tragic events of her life soon become comic, especially with the guidance and help-- mostly unsolicited, by the way--of her pot-smoking, gun-toting, and much beloved, grandmother figure Madea (Tyler Perry). Director Darren Grant brings Tyler Perry’s vision to the screen by intricately weaving together a mix of drama and comedy to tell the universal experience of broken hearts, redemption, forgiveness, recovery, new found love, inner strength and the importance of family and faith as revealed through a cast of colorful and sometimes familiar characters. [More]
Starring: Kimberly Elise, Tyler Perry, Steve Harris, Cicely Tyson
Starring: Kimberly Elise, Tyler Perry, Steve Harris, Cicely Tyson, Tamara Taylor, Shemar Moore
Director: Darren Grant
Director: Darren Grant
Screenwriter: Tyler Perry
Producer: Tyler Perry, Reuben Cannon
Composer: Camara Kambon
Studio: Lions Gate Films
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Reviews for Diary of a Mad Black Woman
Perry's performance as Madea may have worked onstage, but seems out of place on the screen, even though it's clear he has a great deal of affection for the character.
First-time director Darren Grant gives each scene its face value, with no attempt to look for the real people and situations beneath the polemic.
Tyler Perry's movie is so oblivious to genre that it occupies its own special stylistic niche, if you can imagine such a thing as a romantic revenge farce.
Comic relief is often welcome in drama, but these broad caricatures, which draw easy laughter as the minstrel turns they are, destroy the sense of reality that a large and hardworking cast is otherwise striving to create.
A lot of it shouldn't work -- and doesn't -- but even while you're sitting there, thinking that it can't go much farther off track, it manages to be fairly involving.
With tonal shifts so abrupt that they could give you motion sickness, it goes from cheesy soap opera to bad slapstick to gooey romance to mean-spirited farce.
Woman leaves the audience with the burden of maintaining a church-appropriate patience to appreciate the small charms to be found in Perry's berserk creation.
Mr. Perry's irrepressible energy and rapid-fire wit bring Robin Williams to mind.
To review Diary of a Mad Black Woman is really to review three different movies, none of which is very good.
A very curious and very entertaining mix, the Labradoodle of inspirational romantic-comedy-melodramas.
The messages are nothing if not mixed. On the one hand, Perry's script is a pious celebration of Christian charity and patience. On the other ... well, just look at the MPAA rating.
It's so heartfelt that you'd have to be a curmudgeon to reject its charms outright, and so artificial you'd have to be willfully naive to swallow them whole.
Plenty of mad moviegoers will put this in their diaries as one of the worst pictures in ages.
This movie stew -- equal parts farce, drama and sermon -- gives you plenty to chew on but, ultimately, is less than filling.
It becomes clear that the strength of Diary is its refusal to bow to convention.
As is true of so many play adaptations, the theatrically pitched performances don't work as well on the screen.
Tyler Perry, even if he's no church-show Peter Sellers, obviously carves out some kind of niche here. Remember, they laughed at Ed Wood. And they're still laughing at him.
If not for the larger-than-life multitasking by Tyler Perry, Diary of a Mad Black Woman would be just another tedious, over-the-top movie about self-discovery.
Rarely has a movie been such a tonal train wreck...rather like riding a cinematic roller coaster, and it may well bring on in the viewer the same sort of nausea.
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