Matthew Milam's Blog

I admit that Tyler Perry’s success with his special collection of films is unique in African-American cinema history. I can also appericate that he came from nothing and that nobody black should be hating on his success. In watching I Can Do Bad All By Myself as a movie viewer and not a movie viewer of the African-American community, the problems with his stories become much clearer.

I look at this poster with great upset. Here, in all of her glory, is one of the finest women ever to grace the cinema stage. Yet as soon as the credits role, it is clear the movie isn’t really about her. I Can Do Bad All By Myself, which is based on the stage play of the same name written by Tyler Perry, is a film that merely has Taraji P. Henson acting and speaking in accordance to the Tyler Perry universe.

I wish I could go into the plot of the film, but Perry’s movies aren’t about plots or structure. From Diary Of A Mad Black Woman to I Can Do Bad All By Myself, the issues and problems of the African-American community that have been done before get basically rehashed in his films without bringing anything new to the table. Sure it’s nice to showcase scenes where adults show they are adults and make sure young children respect them. What Perry seems to do, in addition to going over the top with themes of this nature, is repeat in every other scene the same issue.

Issue-oriented films are a touchy thing for audiences. Topics that deal in the grey area of love, family and relationships are things people experience everyday of their lives. To shine the darker aspects of these issues in a film, without taking a different prespective, often make an audience feel like they are watching a news commentator on one of the big cable networks.

Woody Allen essentially has been doing these same themes that Tyler Perry has been doing for years. The difference between the two is not a difference in race, or a difference in their cultural backgrounds. The thing that makes Annie Hall repeat watching over I Can Do Bad All By Myself is it’s ability to make those very dark moments in life not only funny, but ironic as well. Life is hell, but it’s hell partly because some of us are too used to it.

Brian J. White’s character, who plays a married man who sleeps with April (played by Henson) on the side, is abusive and controlling. He tells her on the constant that he loves her, she believes him. The question we are never answered is exactly why she got with him. Given that I have recently been told  something about someone doing something similar to what Henson’s character is doing recently, it would have made sense for me to know the events take took place that made her choose such a dispicable man.

Perry’s problem, which existed in just about all the characters in this film, is there really is no backstory. 

Why is Brian J. White’s character a control freak?

Why does he keep having children with a woman he doesn’t really love?

Why does he sleep with another woman while still married to his wife?

If you buy the idea that we really don’t need to care about Brian J. White’s character given that he is a terrible man in the first place, then please explain why Adam Rodriguez’s character was any better for April. He’s a good man who tries to see the good in everyone, but can someone like that with such a good heart really deal with someone so damaged by life? It would be interesting, and perhaps a good way to balance White’s character with Rodriguez’s, to show that he was married to a good woman who died.

This idea, however hokey it may appear, would suggest that both Adam and Taraji’s characters have something in common; Taraji’s character doesn’t know how to love anyone and Adam’s character would be simply a broken man who is looking for something to replace someone he lost. It would be the equivalent of something very real in relationships; there are no perfect candinates, you pick the abusive cheater or the man who tries to see his wife in other women. Since I can’t go back and write re-write his stories, I’ll just accept what is on screen, which as it stands isn’t all that great.