Temptation Reviews

Straitlaced and sermonizing, this is a sluggish cautionary tale about deviating from righteous church teachings.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10

Smollett-Bell, Gross, and Brandy work hard to bring an emotional authenticity to their characters and relationships--an authenticity that is ultimately negated by questionable choices in Perry's script and direction.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

beyond dumb

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

Perry has now built a media empire from spinning his own wheels.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

Tyler Perry has found a star in Jurnee Smollett-Bell.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10

Never has a film so needed Tyler Perry in Madea drag or a pot of boiling grits hurled in someone's face.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

There are many problems with the opening two-thirds of Temptation; an infinity of problems. But the biggest is that it's immoderately boring.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10

Perry has some worthwhile filmic models-Temptation gestures at Woody Allen in its setup, and Douglas Sirk in its melodrama-but he isn't even in the same star cluster as those greats.

Full Review

Perry accurately points out how, when a marriage gets dull, you don't actually need a rich, intense playboy (Robbie Jones) who reveals himself to be Lucifer incarnate to speed up the "till death do us part" process.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Look, we know what's going to happen. The movie's called Temptation, okay? Yet we still have to sit through more than an hour of flirty glances and repetitive conversations between Judith and Harley until anything vaguely adulterous occurs.

Full Review | Original Score: 0/4

Tyler Perry's Temptation is an awful, awful film and while it is easy to mock and dismiss, it is also kind of a shame to behold.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

Tyler Perry is a moralist who doesn't have sense enough to engage us by making sin look like fun.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

[Perry's] characters, if they could speak outside of his universe, would do nothing but scream in agony as life crushes them in its God-shaped vise of moral consequence. And that is awesome to watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 0/5

Soapy melodrama has mixed messages about love and marriage.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

A present-day parable preaching to the choir with sobering warnings about taking your mate for granted and the love of money as the root of all evil. The Gospel according to Tyler Perry!

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

When its third act erupts into full-blown theatrical maximalism, Tyler Perry's Temptation practically turns into Brian De Palma's Temptation.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Limp pacing and countless shots of Washington's skyline plague the narrative.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

It isn't until Temptation grows flamboyantly bad in its final act that it rises to the level of good dumb fun in the trashy tradition of Perry's most entertainingly awful films.

Full Review | Original Score: D+

A few wild, third-act twists give Perry's middling melodrama some soap-opera kick. But all the finger-wagging sure does get tiring after a while.

Full Review | Original Score: C+

Perry's ongoing disinterest in improving as a filmmaker is now seemingly part of his unshakable belief in himself, his insistence on doing his thing his way.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5