Acrimony Review
R: Language, sexual content and some violence
Lionsgate, Tyler Perry Studios
2 Hrs
Writer & Director: Tyler Perry
Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Lyriq Bent, Crystle Stewart, Jazmyn Simon, Jay Hunter, Ptosha Storey, Ajiona Alexus, Antonio Madison, Bresha Webb, Danielle Nicolet, Nelson Estevez, Kendrick Cross
INTRO: Hell hath no fury like a new Tyler Perry movie.
Melinda Gayle, a faithful wife (Taraji P. Henson) tired of standing by her devious husband (Lyriq Bent) is enraged when it becomes clear she has been betrayed. Melinda finds out that her husband gets engaged to another woman, and loses control and all hell breaks loose.
THE GOOD
How could I possibly kick off a review of a movie starring Taraji P. Henson without complimenting Henson’s performance? Taraji P. Henson is one of the few people in Hollywood who can never pull a terrible performance in my eyes. Yeah, some of the roles that she plays are very reminiscent of her other well-known characters (well, now it’s just pretty much Cookie from “Empire”) but Henson knows how to send chills down your spine. If you fuck up or cross her in any way, Henson slowly turns her head and gives you an Ice Cube scowl so disturbing that you regret everything you just did to her. Henson’s character, Melinda, is very aggressive when pushed to her breaking point and has no regard for anyone else, for all she sees is red. Henson could be given a shit script and somehow she’ll make the most out of it. This is unfortunate because THIS IS ONE OF THOSE SHIT SCRIPTS.
THE BAD
There are two boxes that Tyler Perry has; one box is for his comedies and one is for his dramas. When it comes to his comedies, Tyler Perry puts himself into the box labelled “Madea”, and when it comes to his dramas, he puts himself into another box labelled “Recycled Ideas” and has been riding off of those boxes for the past 13 years.
Tyler Perry must be a great environmentalist because he loves to reduce, reuse, and recycle the same damn concepts and do nothing with them besides amuse your southern grandparents and dumb friends who have no taste in film. It has been 13 years since Perry set foot into film and, over the course of time, he has learned absolutely nothing besides how to get rich and maintain that lifestyle. He has worked with some great filmmakers and has been featured in roles where he shined. After you work with the likes of David Fincher you should at least have an idea of how to advance your filmmaking, no? You’re going to do the same ideas with the same tropes? You’re going to not use any source of lighting for your scenes that feature dark interiors? You’re going to decide to shoot scenes in your studio over obvious green screen instead of filming on location? Holy shit, Tyler Perry is the Black Tommy Wiseau.
But what is “Acrimony”? Well “Acrimony” tells the story of a woman named Melinda who becomes obsessed with her problematic ex-husband, named Robert, who put her through hell over the course of their 22-year marriage. She then wants revenge after he moves on with his life and finds a new significant other. One might say she turns into a Mad Black Woman.
Perry starts off by showing how Melinda met Robert in college while Henson’s voiceover comes in every time her younger self makes a dumb decision. But, here’s the funny thing, as much as the concept sounds slightly different than his other works, Perry recycled the same narrative beats that makes you groan throughout. We see the younger Melinda being a naive girl falling for the dark Black man who emotionally abuses and manipulates her.
HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES HAS HE REUSED THAT SAME IDEA!?
Just because Henson’s voiceovers happen whenever Melinda makes a dumb decision, like primarily enabling Robert to mess with her life even more by being a self-centered con man who only knew how to talk a good game, doesn’t make her a likeable character to follow. She’s just a moron. Melinda knows how much of an uncaring idiot Robert is, since the film shows how he put her in debt since 1996, but for some reason Melinda goes, “I had to fall for the con.” She had to fall for her husband’s cons for over 22 years of marriage and right then and there, your believability is thrown right out the window; no woman in their right mind would remain married to a man who put her in debt, cheats on her, and tells nothing but lies and delivers false promises for 22 years.
There is no logical explanation for why Melinda stayed married to a terrible man for over two decades other than “she had to.” It just narrows down to Perry’s poor writing where logic is not a word he’s aware of. If you wanted me to be invested in Melinda and sympathize with her, you could’ve shown how, over the course of their marriage, Robert shows his true colors of being a complete lazy loser instead of displaying all of his negative qualities in the forefront when we meet him, and then showing that nothing has changed in 20 years. You know that within that time span, the divorce would have occured in the early 2000s. At that point you could’ve written Melinda off as a likable character.
As a matter of fact, none of the characters in the movie are likable. They’re all caricatures of people that have absolutely no semblance of how a person would talk or react in certain situations. There are so many moments during the film where I just want to pull Perry aside from his director’s chair and ask, “Have you really become this out of touch with how regular people communicate? Because we don’t do stupid shit like this anymore. This ‘Fatal Attraction’/‘Obsessed’ storyline has been done to death a numerous amount of times and you’re doing nothing to make it any better.” He has no clue how people talk to each other nowadays because there are either people acting like dumbasses by talking so mundane, or going so over-the-top it crosses over to cartoonish. And just because he throws a few “motherfuckers” in here to receive an R rating doesn’t make this any different from his other works.
But, I know why you’re here. You’re here to watch Taraji P. Henson go crazy and beat a person up like she did with Hakeem and that broom. Nope. There is no pleasure out of her insanity or obsession because it’s uncomfortable… like, laughably uncomfortable. When Melinda finally gets that divorce and Robert actually starts repaying her debt and moving on with his life, she just turns crazy because... why not?! As Robert posts pictures of his new girl on social media, Melinda makes a profile with the name “pissed bitch” and starts harassing her while doing a voodoo dance. Why? BECAUSE SHE CRAZY?!
But that third act. The third act. By no means, nothing about “Acrimony” is good by any stretch of the imagination, but that third act is worth the price of admission. This movie’s climax is so absurd that I just couldn’t stop laughing. For a good ten minutes, “Acrimony” became one of the best unintentional comedies I’ve seen this year. The poor filmmaking, writing, editing, and direction just starts coming together like a Voltron mech and sends this movie off on a stupidly sour note that only Tyler Perry can consider as genius.
THE RENDY
“Black Panther” came out a month ago where Black people were displayed as kings, warriors, and (most of all) superheroes. Here, we have Tyler Perry displaying Black people as he always has over the course of 13 years: incompetent, stupid, inhuman. With the exception of “I Can Do Bad All By Myself,” and “Why Did I Get Married?” none of the characters that Perry has written feature the qualities of a person. I can’t take glee out of watching or poking fun at his dramas anymore, honestly. I’m tired, man! I’m tired of Perry’s terribly written dramas with the same recycled characters he’s been writing for years where everyone is acting like idiots and assumes his audience are idiots for investing in them. Shit, I got immersed into the movie just because my audience was immersed into it as well where we’re all laughing and groaning at the same beats. So, in other words, Perry defeated me and it’s exhausting.
Black cinema is advancing and changing for the better, for we’re represented as complex figures the world sees us for. You have “Black Panther,” “Get Out,” “Moonlight,” “Top Five,” and “Girls Trip” as movies that presents us as people and empower us. Tyler Perry presents us as over-the-top cartoons that make nothing but dumb decisions and have us overreact to the simplest of things that nobody can ever relate to. There is no realism in his movies and for that my low regard of respect for him just went down even lower.
LAST STATEMENT
As much as Henson tries to her best in “Acrimony”, her performance can’t overshadow the incompetence of Tyler Perry’s script and direction making for another entry in his extensive list of terrible films.
Rating: 1/5 |22%
Super Scene: Melinda vs. boat.
