The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
Green Book
Widows
The Walking Dead
Log in with Facebook
OR
By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies, and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango.
Please enter your email address and we will email you a new password.
We want to hear what you have to say but need to verify your account. Just leave us a message here and we will work on getting you verified.
Please reference “Error Code 2121” when contacting customer service.
The Single Moms' Club finds Tyler Perry avoiding some of the pitfalls of his earlier work, but continuing to rely on heavy-handed melodrama at the expense of sensible characters or absorbing storylines.
All Critics (27) | Top Critics (14) | Fresh (5) | Rotten (22) | DVD (1)
The moral here is that no challenge is insurmountable if you form a club. And keep a wine opener handy.
In Tyler Perry's latest opus, "The Single Moms Club," he demonstrates how disparate stereotypes can find common ground through the power of a single cliché.
[T]his is a film about catharsis and camaraderie, not logic.
This is How Stella Got Her Groove Back for the Pop-Tart crowd, a wish-fulfillment weepie that narrowly clears Perry's low bar, thanks mostly to Wendi McLendon-Covey and Cocoa Brown
Mr. Perry's latest film touches upon some recognizable and realistic challenges with efficient compassion, but there's probably more dramatic tension in a car pool than in this film's collection of predicaments.
Just wondering, but if these sisters are indeed capable of doing it for themselves as the film insists, why can't at least one of them do it without a man?
Tyler Perry's The Single Moms Club is a lackluster empowerment fantasy that veers between dull and embarrassing.
As frustrating as it is, Tyler Perry's The Single Moms Club is an insightful, fascinating and often entertaining picture.
The title not only succinctly sums up the basic premise, but the totality of Perry's development of it.
We see very little of the women's vicissitudes, or the ways in which they support one another through their club.
A contrived, formulaic, heavy-handed melodrama about camaraderie and the value of female solidarity.
This is the third feature within a year (on top of two TV shows) to come out of Perry's fast food, drive-thru productions. So it's not surprising that the Single Moms Club feels like it was slapped together by someone who is ready to take the next order.
As Roxane Gay notes in her book of essays "Bad Feminist": "Tyler Perry loves to tell a good morality tale." This has hindered me from watching a Tyler Perry production since the 2005 film "Diary of a Mad Black Woman." That film was filled with forced morality, and stifling stereotypes. This film, too, has its moments of morality, especially when it comes to caricaturized men who are made unnecessarily villainous to suit a woman-power narrative. The women have to fight against ex-husbands, addict ex-boyfriends, institutionalized sexism, and poverty. Each of the women in this film learn a lesson, spoon fed to the audience with each guiltily soapy scene. The women's interactions with each other often revolve around complaining about men, their children, and their lack of support. I'm not even sure that this film can pass the Bechdel Test, or if it does than it's by a narrow margin. While it's nice to see a film helmed by women, I just wish their characters are explored beyond their families. While Jan (McLendon-Covey) has a major plot with her job, it's quickly abandoned, because she is portrayed as a harried career woman who is completely closed off and man hating. It's much better than past Tyler Perry films, but not by much.
Super Reviewer
A mediocre movie that is not for everyone! Overall, once I finished taking in a midday viewing, I realized that The Single Moms Club came off as a very uneven viewing experience. The film drips with sentimental goo and shifts its tone from funny, to uncomfortable, to flat out depressing ever so quickly. There are some heartfelt moments between members of the cast that are effectively powerful. But with an underdeveloped conclusion, some embarrassingly bad line riffing from the actors as mentioned earlier, and a demeaning label that seems saddled to their roles, it was difficult to call this thin inspiring. In hindsight though, I didn't find The Single Moms Club to be a bad film. I just found it to be almost mean-spirited, too coincidental, and vaguely aloof. Let me put it this way, it's a "club" worth checking out only if you avoid going to all the meetings. . When five struggling single moms put aside their differences to form a support group, they find inspiration and laughter in their new sisterhood, and help each other overcome the obstacles that stand in their way.
View All Quotes
View All