All Critics (101)
|
Top Critics (29)
|
Fresh (33)
|
Rotten (68)
|
DVD (1)
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.
For 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'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.
Tyler Perry proves that he is even more ham-handed and cartoonish with drama than he is with his incredibly popular so-called comedies.
Tyler Perry goes art house with For Colored Girls -- and it's both alarming and wonderful to behold.
... women are good and the men are, almost all, bad. It is a cliché overdone and, unless you are a die hard Tyler Perry fan, should be missed.
More Critic Reviews
Top Critic
