A few nights ago I was laughing so hard that I couldn't finish A FALL FROM GRACE. Today I watched the rest of it. OMG, SWEET BABY JESUS 😳. The plot is off-the-wall, the lead character pouts her way through a murder trial, the trial itself was a 5-min montage of 'OBJECTION... OVERRULED.... SUSTAINED...STEP AWAY COUNSELOR...OBJECTION' and then they were at closing argument. I'm not going to spoil the ending b/c there is NO WAY any sane person is going to guess how the story unfolds. The movie could have had an alien spaceship land and lasers blast their way into the courtroom to present key evidence... and it would've made as much sense. The shit was bananas!
I get the Tyler Perry economics. This was a 5-day shoot. This was boot camp/factory work/Roger Corman rolled into one long dirty streak across the face of Netflix. Now race complicates everything in this equation. He's working in Atlanta...a town where there are 2 black women for every black man. A cosmopolitan city filled with professional black women. And in the southern cities, in general, there is a lack of black male professionals to match the amount of black females. So he's dealing that that deep psychological pressure, the supply-and-demand of love pressure. I get it. And it's even more apparent if you go to a black church. The character in this script isn't more complex. She is literally the vice president of a bank (to quote Jackson's A STRANGE LOOP) who thinks she will never fall in love again until she meets a man 'too good to be true.' But guess what...spoiler alert: he is! I will say this though...there are some BIG twists in the story toward the end. It's like he took the note about writing the same black female dynamic and he said 'okay, you want something different...how about THIS!!!?!'
Unfortunately the twists make absolutely NO GODDAMN SENSE. There are enormous plot holes, logic problems, and things that go 'wow....wait, WTF?!?' The entire backend of the movie is a slide into absurdity and horror. Poor Cicely Tyson out here looking like she's in a Korean horror movie. The beginning of the movie is a clue, but the clue doesn't MAKE SENSE! It's crazy. He's trying to wink to the audience but the wink isn't seductive...it's like 'wink wink...guess what? My house is on fire!' You would be like 'yo...Why are winking at me to tell me that?! That's not scary of sexy...it's just weird and off-putting. Take care of your house.'
Granted, I respect the used car salesman hustle of Perry...but Tyler baby...you know what...I'm not going to say it. I'm not gonna 'should' anyone b/c they're too many 'soldier shoulds' online telling ppl what to think and how to live. But Tyler baby...babbbbeee... I-I, don't even know what to say about those plot points. You know what: not important. Namaste!
Tyler Perry is successful b/c he is a WILDLY entertaining hack who has no interests in craftsmanship. Freed of artistic integrity, he is able to crank out an insane amount of product to fill content needs at bargain-basement prices. His stories are overflowing with hysterical impossible contrivances that will make half the audience scream WTF and the other half love it...but no one walks away bored. You will never be bored in a Perry movie. It's like going on a cross-country road trip with a meth head: you know you're gonna have stories to tell your grandkids...if you make it out alive.
His commitment to this ethos of faster, cheaper, more shirtless men, and more Jesus has attracted a following. That following has attracted...good actors. Surprisingly, at this stage in a hack career, he is pulling in stars...usually black women who are older and given less exciting roles at this point in their career. Perry offers them the chance to 'go in' on playing crazy, demented, manipulative, sexy, and layers unexplored in most Hollywood fare. In return, these older actors deliver the goods...no matter the script, the shooting time, the lack of craft. They come to work.
If you ever doubt the commitment of old-pro actors to read a whack-a-doo, banana pants crazy-ass script, be told they're going to shoot the entire movie in 5 days, wear the cheapest shake-and-go Brazilian wigs, and deliver absurd lines with absolute Hamlet-like conviction...then A FALL FROM GRACE should restore your faith in the chainsmoking, lunch pail, artists. These are the kind of actors who could shoot 20 pages of a cheesy 1960s soap opera script during the day and then do a 3-hour play in the evening, snort all the coke at a nightclub, get into a fistfight with the bouncer, and show up on set at 7AM, fresh as a daisy. So kudos to the cast for pure commitment.
I get the Tyler Perry economics. This was a 5-day shoot. This was boot camp/factory work/Roger Corman rolled into one long dirty streak across the face of Netflix. Now race complicates everything in this equation. He's working in Atlanta...a town where there are 2 black women for every black man. A cosmopolitan city filled with professional black women. And in the southern cities, in general, there is a lack of black male professionals to match the amount of black females. So he's dealing that that deep psychological pressure, the supply-and-demand of love pressure. I get it. And it's even more apparent if you go to a black church. The character in this script isn't more complex. She is literally the vice president of a bank (to quote Jackson's A STRANGE LOOP) who thinks she will never fall in love again until she meets a man 'too good to be true.' But guess what...spoiler alert: he is! I will say this though...there are some BIG twists in the story toward the end. It's like he took the note about writing the same black female dynamic and he said 'okay, you want something different...how about THIS!!!?!'
Unfortunately the twists make absolutely NO GODDAMN SENSE. There are enormous plot holes, logic problems, and things that go 'wow....wait, WTF?!?' The entire backend of the movie is a slide into absurdity and horror. Poor Cicely Tyson out here looking like she's in a Korean horror movie. The beginning of the movie is a clue, but the clue doesn't MAKE SENSE! It's crazy. He's trying to wink to the audience but the wink isn't seductive...it's like 'wink wink...guess what? My house is on fire!' You would be like 'yo...Why are winking at me to tell me that?! That's not scary of sexy...it's just weird and off-putting. Take care of your house.'
Granted, I respect the used car salesman hustle of Perry...but Tyler baby...you know what...I'm not going to say it. I'm not gonna 'should' anyone b/c they're too many 'soldier shoulds' online telling ppl what to think and how to live. But Tyler baby...babbbbeee... I-I, don't even know what to say about those plot points. You know what: not important. Namaste!
Tyler Perry is successful b/c he is a WILDLY entertaining hack who has no interests in craftsmanship. Freed of artistic integrity, he is able to crank out an insane amount of product to fill content needs at bargain-basement prices. His stories are overflowing with hysterical impossible contrivances that will make half the audience scream WTF and the other half love it...but no one walks away bored. You will never be bored in a Perry movie. It's like going on a cross-country road trip with a meth head: you know you're gonna have stories to tell your grandkids...if you make it out alive.
His commitment to this ethos of faster, cheaper, more shirtless men, and more Jesus has attracted a following. That following has attracted...good actors. Surprisingly, at this stage in a hack career, he is pulling in stars...usually black women who are older and given less exciting roles at this point in their career. Perry offers them the chance to 'go in' on playing crazy, demented, manipulative, sexy, and layers unexplored in most Hollywood fare. In return, these older actors deliver the goods...no matter the script, the shooting time, the lack of craft. They come to work.
If you ever doubt the commitment of old-pro actors to read a whack-a-doo, banana pants crazy-ass script, be told they're going to shoot the entire movie in 5 days, wear the cheapest shake-and-go Brazilian wigs, and deliver absurd lines with absolute Hamlet-like conviction...then A FALL FROM GRACE should restore your faith in the chainsmoking, lunch pail, artists. These are the kind of actors who could shoot 20 pages of a cheesy 1960s soap opera script during the day and then do a 3-hour play in the evening, snort all the coke at a nightclub, get into a fistfight with the bouncer, and show up on set at 7AM, fresh as a daisy. So kudos to the cast for pure commitment.
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