For Colored Girls (2010)

...when white voters stop assuming the movie is about the Birmingham bombing of 4 black church girls and actually go see the movie themselves.

Or if you have an issue with Tyler Perry, then just remember he is the highest grossing filmmaker of 2010 (behind James Cameron). So he must be doing something right.

And another thing, if you just don't understand black films or the idea that they are successful black people in society with high paying jobs, then you need to watch more than the Andy Griffin Show and All In The Family.

Basically, go see the movie and then review it. Don't make assumptions.

Just wanted to put my two cents in.

Fmovies: This movie was in my view brilliantly done. I have a love-hate relationship with Tyler. I think he is the best producer in the world when it comes to casting actors of color, selecting music and scores for his films and promoting his films. But I have been a critic of Tyler's writing because his evil characters have always been very one-dimensional and over the top evil. However in this movie, although you feel disdain for certain characters and the situations that were presented, it is clear that every character had a reason for the way they were and thus you could actually empathize with most of the characters. I am pleased that there were no caricatures. Every character I felt had faults/weaknesses and strengths. I loved the motif of the characters passing each other by in the beginning half which all culminated at the pivotal point in the movie with them beginning to band together to the aid of each other.

I think it was a strong ensemble cast(including Janet) and should be nominated as such, much like they did with the movie "Crash". However in my view Oscar nods are due for Kimberly Elise and Phylicia Rashad. As someone else mentioned, the scene with them at the end was deeply moving. I think even for Michael although I would guess the black community does not want to see another of our males nominated for something negative but he played that part really honestly and showed great turmoil.

I feel that people are unjustly criticizing Janet. The only issue I had was that I wish her voice was stronger. I made the observation also, that she stole some of her mannerisms from Meryl Streep's character in "The Devil Wears Prada" seeing as she was playing a similar character. I think the stoicism and "lack of emotion", that she is being criticized for, actually lends itself to the character. Her lack of expression may be a result of botox which would be very common for her character to have in addition to the type of person her character was - one that tried to hide her emotion. I think she showed that tendency of trying to hide emotion very well. Thandie was also awesome and her character quite layered. For some reason I couldn't imagine Mariah Carey actually in that role but it would have been interesting to see her interpretation.

I have noticed that someone mentioned anachronism and wondered about the era that the movie is set in. It has been stated by the actors, and even based on the mise-en-scene itself we can tell, that the movie is set in present day although the play is set in the 70's. They simply were able to transfer Michael Ealy's character having been in the Vietnam War to being in the present day Iraq War. Nobody used cell phones because nobody in the movie talked on telephones.

I don't understand why critics praised "Precious" yet would bash this. I thought Precious was good for an independent effort but I feel this movie - look-wise is far better and it had better acting overall, than did "Precious". It also showed far more variety in emotions. Precious was just sad straight through. In our theater there was laughing, there was crying, there was disbelief - and there was great drama/action. I mean there were scenes I was too afraid to watch, scenes I couldn't take my eyes off and scenes that were hilarious and serious all at the same time.

I think this is a great piece of cinema by Tyler Perry, with great dialog, great actors and a great look and while it may not be perfect, no film is.

PLEASE STOP DIRECTING!!

I had a feeling I was done for when I saw the corny, student film style opening credits (For Colored Girls, For Colored Girls, For Colored Girls...) Uck!!

Peel away your ego Tyler Perry!!!!! Hint: someone else directed Precious, that's why it went as far as it did!!

You should have let someone like Baz Luhrmann direct "For Colored Girls..." I've seen and read this play and I've always loved it! The film could have been so much better!

The other actresses were SO great that you should have hired unknown actresses that were actually strong actresses to play Janet Jackson's role, Thandie Newton's role, and Whoopi Goldberg's role.

Janet Jackson was PUSHED. I didn't believe her. Janet needed to train her voice, she was in her throat when she confronts her husband with her fake tears. It look like you guys were adding tear drops at every take. FAIL!

Im a HUGE Whoopi fan but i didn't like her either. Viola Davis would have been stronger.

Perry I wish you would stop directing. You have money now, produce! And, find good directors to take over the projects you're interested in.

Perry waste good actor's talent. I want to see Kerry Washington, Kimberly Elise and Phylicia Rashad get Oscar nods, but because of you it's probably not going to happen. If a good director worked on this production they would all be nominated, they're amazing!!!

I've seen and read the play, "For Colored Girls..." it's fantastic!!! If Tyler Perry wanted to keep the poetry as he did he should have made it a musical like the stage production or let someone like Baz Luhrmann direct it. A more talented director wouldn't have actresses breaking into poems in the middle of a scene, just because. He needed to find a more artsy and less disturbing way of adding the poetry.

Thandie newton should NOT be cast in "urban" films. She has not perfected the accent or the behaviour and it's disturbing! She takes away from the beauty of those characters. She's a spoof of what that character should be.

It's OK to hire more unknown actresses!!! If their talented, like Tessa Thompson, your productions would be so much better!! We don't need you throwing Janet Jackson and Whoopi Goldberg in our face. We don't care. THEY CAN'T ACT!!

Tyler Perry sensationalized bad situations instead of appropriately directing a tragedy.

Disappointed!

For Colored Girls fmovies. I will start by saying that I am not a Tyler Perry fan. I don't generally watch or enjoy his movies. I was also hesitant to see this play turned into a movie, but my husband really wanted to see it, so I went somewhat reluctantly to see how TP would butcher this play.

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. First of all, the play is not something that can be easily rendered into a movie. It's more of a performance than a traditional "play". There is not a coherent plot, and even the vignettes are often incomplete stories. The men that are central actors in the womens' stories are completely voiceless and have no role in the play whatsoever. The dialog from the different characters is beautiful and elegant and haunting, so to be true to the story you have to keep the language that is used.

So, it's a difficult situation to be in, no plot really to paraphrase or "adapt" with very precise language that needs to be incorporated to keep the beauty of the piece. It is a task that a better filmmaker than TP should have tackled....but it's doubtful that anyone who had the talent AND the juice to make this movie actually would have, so TP is all that's left.

The film is choppy at parts...NOT seamlessly interweaving the added plot-driven dialog with the elegant and colorful soliloquies from the original play. Also, some of the particular poems seem oddly-placed, and out of context.

However, the performance of the pieces did give a meaning that reading the play does not. Pieces that I understood in one way when I read them took on a different and more potent meaning when I saw them being performed in the context of the film. The delivery of most (not all) of the poems and the character portrayals generally was excellent.

There is some overacting (Kerry Washington in particular stood out as overdone to me), and some of Tyler Perry's typical caricatures (if you are a light-skinned man with a high paying job....you are a bastard!), but if I evaluated this movie based on whether my understanding and experience of the text was expanded by this film, I would say it was.

Perhaps if I had seen the performance I would evaluate this film less kindly, but I think that if you come in understanding 1) it is a lofty performance piece being rendered as film, and 2) it has incorporated some of the performance aspect of the play into the film, I think you could appreciate it and enjoy it.

For Colored Girls (2010)

An artful, gutsy, moving experience.

You could easily see this movie and say that it's overly artful, overtly gutsy, and an overwhelmingly moving experience. You would have to like this kind of high drama to get into this at all. Very high drama. I do, and so I loved this movie.

If you've seen "Crash" you know how this movie is put together--a series of high powered characters in tough situations are followed separately in an interwoven and increasingly connected urban universe. This is a work about women, African-American women, and about their ultimately horrible plight in a world of greed, horror, and men, who don't come off very well. So they turn increasingly inward, and to each other, to survive.

Director Tyler Perry has great material here--the Ntozake Shange play that wowed Broadway in 1975. One of the strengths here is one of the things people find irritating--the characters speak at times in long lines of poetic monologue. It isn't realistic, but it's beautiful, and in fact it really is poetry, and is part of the overall style. This helps form the overall aura of the movie, as well, of highbrow seriousness in a gutsy, often low income narrative. The story gets tweaked for 2010, though some of the themes don't make sense for our times, most glaring the backstreet abortion.

The acting is fabulous, and uniformly so. Everyone is able to really pour it on, which is difficult when they are sometimes speaking through actual poetry. And so through all the tears comes a realization that this very artificially outrageous drama has deeply deeply serious intentions.

If you like movies for how they are made--the editing, the filming, the set design--you'll be impressed. It's highly artful in a Hollywood, expensive way, an uncompromised production. Of course, as a viewer, you have to like that, especially when it gets artsy, as when a mother and daughter speak in two simultaneous monologues and the camera, and the sound, film back and forth between them, while still delicately keeping both threads continuous and palpable throughout. And the moment has huge symbolism, too, because it's about how they never understand each other, even when they pretend to try.

If there's a large problem here, it's in the endless excess. There is more tragedy, and more emotional crisis, than you can handle in a movie. I think it starts to be a parody of itself, and toward the end you are just ready for a catharsis. The choreographed ending is a little predictable and breezy, too, though even here, when the women gather on the roof, there is still a complex, interwove poetic power.

Forget the cynics and the impatient, if you can, that have slammed this film. It's not a typical Tyler Perry movie at all. It's a smart, beautiful film, and in some ways a great film.

I was among the first of the regular people to view the film last night at a Midnight Screening. I'm an actor and very familiar with Shange's work, having seen it numerous times & its on my bookshelf. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, even more than I thought I would. (I am NOT a Tyler Perry Fan, although I have seen most of his melodramas)This film is clearly a departure from his usual style, and for the most part he gets it really right!! As had been stated by numerous critics, the film tends to slow down if not come to a totally stand still when the actresses began to deliver the poems juxtaposed with TP's own dialog. There is a lack of fluidity more so in the first half of the film than the second, but I was not in the least really bothered by it. All of the Women give Incredible Performances, save for Whoopi Goldberg, who is wonderful in the film BUT, I feel needed more takes than she was given to really dig deeper. I feel like she thought, I'm in a Tyler Perry movie, this ain't Steven Spielberg directing me. However, she is still enjoyable I mean her character is just OUT there. Kimberly Elise and Phylicia Rashad should both be on ALL of the Awards ballots this upcoming Season! Kimberly is absolutely FANTASTIC and Phylicia is nothing short of the actress she has always been....extraordinarily BRILLIANT! The scenes they share together, particularly the one towards the end of the film is Oscar Worthy in itself. Phylicia and Loretta handle Shange's language with such specific rhythm and cadence that you forget you're listening to a poem. I wish all could achieve this, however all of them handle the poetry effortlessly and beautifully. Janet isÂ…..OK, but just OK. She is very limited in her acting range and it CLEARLY shows in a film with these other fine incredibly seasoned actresses. Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington also are just wonderful. Enough of me writing, JUST GO SEE THE FILM! Its really good, and great for a TP film. If that says anything.