For Colored Girls (2010)
Average Rating: 5.1/10
Reviews Counted: 103
Fresh: 33 | Rotten: 70
Tyler Perry has assembled a fine cast for this adaptation of the 1975 play, and his heart is obviously in the right place, but his fondness for melodrama cheapens a meaningful story.
Average Rating: 5.1/10
Critic Reviews: 32
Fresh: 10 | Rotten: 22
Tyler Perry has assembled a fine cast for this adaptation of the 1975 play, and his heart is obviously in the right place, but his fondness for melodrama cheapens a meaningful story.
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Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 28,213
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Movie Info
Ntozake Shange's Obie Award-winning play exploring the plight of black women makes the leap from stage to screen with this ensemble drama directed by Tyler Perry, and starring Janet Jackson, Loretta Devine, Hill Harper, Thandie Newton, Whoopi Goldberg, Kerry Washington, and Macy Gray. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Watch It Now
Cast
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Kimberly Elise
Crystal, Crystal/Brown -
Janet Jackson
Jo/Red, Joanna -
Loretta Devine
Juanita, Juanita/Green -
Thandie Newton
Tangie, Tangie/Orange -
Anika Noni Rose
Yasmine, Yasmine/Yellow -
Kerry Washington
Kelly, Kelly/Blue -
Tessa Thompson
Nyla, Nyla/Purple -
Phylicia Rashad
Gilda -
Whoopi Goldberg
Alice, Alice/White -
Macy Gray
Rose -
Michael Ealy
Beau Willie -
Omari Hardwick
Carl -
Richard Lawson
Frank -
Hill Harper
Donald -
Khalil Kain
Bill -
Rayna Tharani
Renee -
Jaycee Williams
Kenya -
Thomas "Deuce" Jessup
Kwame -
May Zayan
Katina -
John Crow
Dr. Davis -
Michael Cory Davis
Man #1 -
Jason Graham
Man #2 -
Ayo Sorrells
Man #3 -
Kendrick Cross
Man #4 -
Joe Amato
Driver -
Ambrya Underwood
Girl #1 -
Jackie Prucha
Nurse -
Holly Crawshaw
Waitress -
Roevely Rancell
Nurse -
David Feigenbaum
Security Guard -
Karen Slack
Soprano #1 -
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For Colored Girls Trailer & Photos
All Critics (103) | Top Critics (32) | Fresh (33) | Rotten (70) | DVD (2)
Perry has assembled a formidable ensemble, including Loretta Devine, Kimberly Elise, Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose, Tessa Thompson, Kerry Washington, Whoopi Goldberg, Janet Jackson, Phylicia Rashad and, in the most searing cameo, Macy Gray.
Top CriticFor Colored Girls is so shamelessly terrible it would make a great midnight hoot-fest, if you had the stomach to laugh at Shange or some of the best (and most underused) actresses of their generation...
Ham-handed, obvious, overblown and pretentious, For Colored Girls is a plain disaster.
Director Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls is a bold example of an artist's reach exceeding his grasp. And it's hard not to applaud his determination and grade for ambition.
Perry gets points for persistence, yes, and for ambition. But that's not enuf.
Shange's words retain their power despite the melodramatic incidents Perry has woven to fill in the spaces between poems, his flat, TV-style direction and the highly variable performances of an all-star cast.
Perry aims high, and doesn't embarrass himself in tackling this iconic but dated play.
"For Colored Girls" features a lot of heartache and pain, but lacks any sense of purpose. It sacrifices depth for despair and suffers because of it.
Best" and "worst", "good" and "bad" are judgment calls that seem unusually difficult to apply here... [Tyler Perry's] strangest and most endlessly fascinating film.
Perry's awkwardly constructed screenplay and equally muddled direction is one 'metaphysical dilemma' not even these strong, and strongly gifted, women can conquer.
Tyler Perry movies certainly have their place in society, as they undoubtedly have a strong moral core and are made with noble intentions. On the evidence of For Colored Girls though, he should leave the serious drama alone.
Almost everyone in the cast is too talented for this.
It's refreshing to see an all black cast, in a film that places black women's stories front and centre; it's just a shame that the stories are such downers.
Director Tyler Perry has taken on a huge task in bringing Ntozake Shange's stage play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf to the screen.
These performances are exceptional. While the structure of the film doesn't work very well, there is nothing at all wrong with the acting.
'For Colored Girls' doesn't do justice to the play it's based upon. However, the talent Tyler Perry has assembled here cannot be denied.
A slice-of-life soap opera on what it's like to be a black woman in America.
While gunning for the same empowering vibe as Waiting To Exhale, enduring this miserable effort from Tyler Perry is more like praying to expire.
Excruciating when it's bad, which is far too often, but a brave failure in lots of ways.
Perry crafts poorly paced soap opera, playing out in the most obvious and crass manner possible the situations that the poems subtly dance around. Shange's original text...
At least an interesting failure.
Tyler Perry's drama is beautifully acted but Ntozake Shange's multiple, interlocking narratives ultimately defy his efforts to bring them to the screen.
So thickly does Perry lay on the sanctimony and self-pity, you begin to wonder if it's all a spoof. Stick a Wayans brother in there and you could call it Tragic Movie.
Perry gives with one hand and takes with the other-the thrill of seeing these actresses "do their stuff" is decimated by Perry's insistence on welding a plot and adding "contemporary" additions to Shange's lyrical, timeless monologues.
Audience Reviews for For Colored Girls
Super Reviewer
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- Juanita: Juanita: I got a real dead loving here for you now, because I don't know anymore how to avoid my own face wet with my tears! Because I had convinced myself that colored girls have no right to sorrow!
- Frank: I guess this is goodbye.
- Juanita: Like you've never seen it before.
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- Juanita/Green: I brought you what joy I found, and I found joy. And then theres that woman who hurt you, and who you left three or four times and then you went back after you put my heart in the bottom of your shoe! [trembling voice] And I didn't have nothing. So, I went to where somebody had something for me. But none of them were you. I got a real dead loving here for you now.
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- Tangie: Being alive and being a woman is all I got, but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven't conquered yet.
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- Jo/Red: Save your "sorry." One thing I don't need are anymore apologies. I got sorry greeting me at the front door. You can keep yours. I don't know what to do with them... I can't even... I have to throw some away. I can't even get to the clothes in my closet for all the sorries. I'm not even sorry about you being sorry.
Discussion Forum
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Foreign Titles
- Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf (UK)
Excellent cast and extremely well acted. This deals with a loosely connected group of women who mainly live in the same apartment block, some of them related. All have their issues and the main theme is betrayal. I don't want to say too much and spoil it, but the inspiring part is how these women find their strength and learn to move on and and deal with what has been dealt to them.
It is quite poetic, some of what they say does not make a lot of sense, but you get the gist. I found it fascinating. Really hooked me in from start to end.