For Colored Girls

To say this is writer-director-producer Tyler Perry's best film yet may be faint praise. The enormously prolific and popular African-American filmmaker takes a leap creatively and succeeds in adding his own voice to Ntozake Shange's 1975 play "for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf," which combines music, dance, and poetry in giving life to the black female experience. Here Perry takes some of the play's poetic monologues, dramatizes them in pure Perry fashion, then skillfully weaves them into the fabric of the scenes. The result—a hybrid of the purely theatrical feel of the play and the kind of melodrama we have come to associate with Perry's scripts—is richly entertaining and involving, if at times way over the top. The monologues serve almost the same purpose as songs do in a musical, but they manage to not stop the action or narrative flow.

Keeping the film grounded while making it sing is the splendid cast of women Perry has smartly assembled. There isn't a bad performance among them, and most of the actors bring their A-game—a necessity because Perry shoots the women in extreme close-up. The camera doesn't lie, and they have to deliver in raw, uncut fashion. Nine women—Jo (Janet Jackson), Tangie (Thandie Newton), Crystal (Kimberly Elise), Gilda (Phylicia Rashad), Kelly (Kerry Washington), Juanita (Loretta Devine), Yasmine (Anika Noni Rose), Nyla (Tessa Thompson), and Alice (Whoopi Goldberg)—are highlighted individually and in some way connected through the story strands as the film moves forward in bits and pieces.

Jackson is riveting as a tough, no-nonsense career woman who is trying to get back in touch with her humanity while drifting apart from her man. Washington is a terrific part of the film's soul, playing a social worker. Rashad portrays a nosy but wise landlady, who has one of the movie's best scenes when she offers tough love to Crystal, who has been floored by an unspeakable tragedy involving her two young kids. Elise is Oscar-worthy and enormously touching as a woman falling apart, unable to escape her grief. Newton is a hoot as a slutty woman with unbelievably bad taste in men. Goldberg plays the religious-zealot mother who tries to control Tangie and her pregnant younger sister, well-played by Thompson. As a nurse involved in an unhappy relationship but still searching for love, Devine is just that, divine; she's alternately hilarious and heartbreaking. Also of note in one scene is Macy Gray as a chilling, seen-it-all abortionist.

The male roles are well-played but all tend to drift into stereotype. Almost all are used as props, through no fault of the talented actors playing them.

"For Colored Girls" isn't for everybody, but those wanting a solidly made and beautifully acted look at the lives of very disparate but interesting women will find it worth a visit.

Genre: Drama
Written and directed by Tyler Perry
Starring Kimberly Elise, Janet Jackson, Thandie Newton, Phylicia Rashad, Loretta Devine, Whoopi Goldberg, Anika Noni Rose, Tessa Thompson, Kerry Washington, Macy Gray, Michael Ealy, Hill Harper, Omari Hardwick.