For Colored Girls

Well, what can I say that hasn't been said? I think we've covered quite a bit about this last week but still, I found this film to be pretty good, not fantastic, but pretty good at what it was trying to do.

Tyler Perry had a pretty difficult job in trying to transition this from one art to another, and from one chronological context to another. I feel as if he did a satisfactory job at this very thing, but there were still some aspects that were lost in transition. For instance, the Lady in (Khaki, Grey?)'s husband acted more like a Vietnam veteran instead of a Gulf War veteran, like we discussed. I think Perry could have tried to make more of a distinction or go into the character's mentality of why he was abusing alcohol, or if he suffered from PTSD. As a result of his actions, I felt as if the troubles the Lady in Grey dealt with throughout the film were hyperbolic (scrubbing her children's blood off the pavement.) This seemed a little problematic, coupled with the piling on of everyone else's tragedy, it leaves an audience feeling overwhelmed, and I think this can be of detriment to the film.

I do applaud Perry for making Juanita Sims (Lady in Green) a blatant vehicle for educating on contraception, and safe sex coupled with Janet Jackson's character (Lady in Red) contracting AIDS, because as I discussed in my Media and Health Class last week, AIDS is still a disease prevalent in African American Communities around the U.S. with assistance not being rendered in an immediate fashion. I understand Perry could have written this out or changed it, but he didn't, and I applaud him for this.

Nonetheless, I think this movie is an emotional roller coaster, and the movie itself is something of a roller coaster in that there are some good moments that get shadowed by some of the hyperbole and the superficial portrayals of some of the characters.