For Colored Girls (A review)

For colored girls...it seems as though black men are at the helm of all their pain and suffering, well at least that's what we're being made to believe by Tyler Perry's adaption of Ntozake's Shange's choreopoem. Aahh yes! Tyler Perry, the voice of black America and the man who seems to be the saviour of many criminally underrated talented black actresses - yes even Janet Jackson...some times.

Now I promised myself prior to watching that I wouldn't be too critical in my analysis of Lionsgate's latest production, all my preconceived notions that Perry will merely highlight the sentimentality in Shange's text rather than reinforce her feminist radicalism was put to one side as I watched the film open with 'Perry's angels', all living in Harlem, starting their day, each reciting in voice-over a line or two from "Dark Phrases," the poem that begins Shange's play. It's the only instance of her words flowing naturally and organically, the rest of the time I found myself playing 'guess who's line this is' as it became embarrassingly clear when Tyler Perry chose to lift entire passages from the original play with no transition from his own rather unpoetical and sometimes outright unintellectual dialogue.

Many have expressed doubts over Tyler Perry's ability to take responsibility of such a monumental story, one full of vivid color and artistry, I can remember early controversy during the first stages of production with many people citing some issues with Tyler Perry's approach to conveying key issues for the black community, especially since he was now at the helm of such an important book in African American literature, , touted at the time as "a celebration of being black and being woman," Shange's work was originally a collection of 20 prose-poems punctuated by dance and music and performed by a cast of seven women on a spare stage, each identified only by the color of her dress. Recounting rites of passage (losing one's virginity), horrors (rape, domestic violence), and pleasures (intellectual and carnal), what we saw was rather an amiable attempt - yes attempt, by Tyler Perry to bring Shange's work to screen and no one can give a better verdict of this than Shange herself who when asked during post production of this film said "I think he did a very fine job, although I'm not sure I would call it a finished film"

What this film does do however is leave you asking question during and after you have watched it, not very stimulating questions I must confess but questions worth asking nonetheless, questions like why does every single one of the characters somehow end up at the hospital and often at the same time and surely Kimberly Elise's character who is a P.A for a high powered blue collared professional should be earning enough to at least live somewhere more desirable and could afford a babysitter who isn't the old lady from next door... what perplexes me the most is how on earth Hill Harper's CSI character managed to find himself roped into a tale of adolescent unprotected sex as Kerry Washington tries to explain how she contracted STI's through the original's 'Pyramid' poem.

No one was expecting this film to truly capture the imaginative and poetic form of Shange's text, that is without saying one of the limiting things about making films, maybe Oprah Winfrey was right when she expressed doubts over whether or not to make 'For colored girls' into a film at all, but there are some heart warming moments where Tyler Perry does tear himself away from his formulaic melodrama so typical of his work and manages to hit so sweetly the poetic consciousness in Shange's work and for that reason alone you have to commend his efforts and therefore deem 'For colored girls' worthy for all to see.