The Movie Review

 

The four couples are in the Bahamas this year. (It was Colorado last time. In the winter. I don't know what they were thinking.) But no sooner have they arrived at their luxurious beach house than Mike the loathsome ex-husband shows up! What is HE doing here?? He says he owns part of the time-share -- apparently this is a time-share? -- and for some reason he insists on using it NOW, staying in the same house as the four couples, even though all four women and at least one of the men hate him, and even though being around his ex-wife makes him miserable. It doesn't make any sense. No one would do this. Mike wouldn't try it, and the others wouldn't stand for it. It's as contrived and moronic as any plot device I've seen this year. (To be fair, I haven't seen The Bounty Hunter.)
Now, as the Colorado snow falls gently outside of their window, one couple will experience a bout with infidelity that will cause the entire group to question the validity of their own respective marriages.

 

 

In Why did i get married too, mastermind Tyler Perry writes, produces, directs, and stars in this comedy drama that explores the complexities of Modern Marriage.

 

Tyler Perry likes to give full value for the entertainment industry, and Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too? is two movies for the price of one.

The first half is a comedy about four married couples gathering for their annual Caribbean vacation.

 

The second half is a seriously overwrought melodrama in which the fault lines that generated laughs in the first half open up, doing damage — in one case irreversible — to all of the marriages, before a tacked-on happy ending featuring an amusing unaccredited cameo.

 

This one thinks that one is cheating on him! This one is certain that one is cheating on her! These two are splitting up! This one is insecure about not being able to find a job, and irritated that his wife's ex-husband keeps hanging around! Here's some cancer! Here's some alcoholism! Would you care for a smattering of domestic violence? Don't mind if I do!

There's nothing inherently wrong with any of those story lines, of course. But Perry handles everything so amateurishly, with on-the-nose dialogue and a complete lack of subtlety or nuance. I marvel at the sheer lunacy of the scene where -- spoilers ahead -- a drunk Gavin harasses a weeping Patricia in the midst of their messy divorce, pours vodka on her, and then sets fire to the photo album containing the only remaining pictures of their dead child. In fact, someone should compile all of Gavin and Patricia's scenes, because their entire story line is off-the-rails insane. I almost want to tell you how it ends, just so you'll know how crazy it is.

At least the movie’s second half gives the cast, particularly Ms. Jackson, Ms. Scott, Sharon Leal and Malik Yoba, something to do besides look pretty. Ms. Jackson’s destruction of a roomful of glass furniture with a golf club is invigorating and oddly funny, and Mr. Perry manages a nice bit of indirection regarding whether one spouse is faithful.

But getting there requires sitting through the comedy, a term that in this case is purely categorical. Hardly any of the laugh lines about age, marriage and the granting or withholding of sex connect; a beach scene with the four husbands that is supposed to be full of crackling repartee is so meandering and unfunny (it feels unwillingly improvised rather than written) that you cannot wait for it to end.

OK, I will tell you. Big spoilers here. Skip this paragraph if you want to be surprised. With their divorce getting uglier and uglier, Patricia comes to Gavin's office with a giant cake, the kind that strippers pop out of. She makes all of Gavin's co-workers sing "Happy Birthday," even though it isn't his birthday. Then out of the cake comes a small, scantily clad gay man, singing "It's Raining Men." Patricia -- who, I should point out, is wearing a suit and tie for some reason -- has done this to humiliate her husband. Duly embarrassed, Gavin storms out of the office, pursued by a screeching Patricia, gets in his car, speeds out of the parking lot, smashes into a passing truck, and dies. In the epilogue, a year later, Patricia meets a new, awesome man played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. THE END. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

Part of me wishes all of Why Did I Get Married Too? did'nt end the Patricia/Gavin story like that, because then at least it would have been "a happy ending". But most of the drama(fun) is much more tame and derivative than that (except for Angela and Marcus' fighting, which tends toward the farcical and pointless). Perry seems to be going through the motions on this one, repeating the platitudes and relationship angst that he's trotted out a half-dozen times already.

 

If I had to choose between the two halves of “Too,” I would go with the melodrama, despite over-the-top touches like a scene in which the self-help author Pat (Janet Jackson), driven to her wits’ end by the relentless mechanics of the plot, forces the other three couples to stand up and hug one another in a hospital waiting room.

  

A large part of the problem is in the conception - the characters are walking clichés of bumpy success and stability achieved at the cost of the soul. (An early close-up of a Range Rover bumper with a Fulton County, Ga., license plate tells us everything we need to know about one couple, and unfortunately, it is meant to.) The ratio of soft to loud among the characters is 8 to 1, leaving Tasha Smith, as the stereotypically sassy Angela, to carry the entire comic load.

Mr. Perry himself plays Terry, the most reserved and mature of the group. At the risk of being condescending, it had to be said that if he had put on his dress and wig and shown up as Madea the movie might have been funnier.

 

Also worth mentioning is the queasy dynamic in which the male characters’ violent impulses are condemned in theory but, when acted on, seem to be implicitly excused, or at least overlooked. Over all, it is the men who always wind up the victims — misunderstood, shut out, sick, dead. They are the ones who bear the cross of marriage. (We won’t get into the running motif in which Mr. Jones’s character, now the outcast of the group, is disparaged for being “sensitive” and drinking “fruit juice.”)

Halfway through the movie, Lou Gossett Jr. and Cicely Tyson come walking down the beach to dispense some wisdom about marriage, like the sages of a Shakespeare comedy. The chance to gaze at Ms. Tyson’s amazing face, in its halo of bright white hair, is the best thing about “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too?” While you’re at it, you can ponder the fact that four decades ago she got to play substantial, star-making roles in “Sounder,” “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and “Roots.” The younger members of the cast should be so lucky.

 

“Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too?” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Though, there is a lot of talk about sex and drugs, and some unsettling moments of domestic violence.

A colleague of mine said to me after writing this,”My wife BETTER not ask me ... read more for the password for my phone”… I will assume we know why!! Did I hear you say, my phone doesn't have one (pass word)!!! Never did! … hallelujah {singing}!

 

The movie hammers on Trust, Tolerance and Forgiveness = LOVE. Let me say this again; Go see this with your spouse just to be sure that you are on the right track.