Caught the new movie Acrimony… aka Tyler Perry’s Acrimony… yes, this is a Tyler Perry movie… one of his morality plays, not a comedy and not starring Medea. Whether that makes it better or worse of about the same, I’ll leave to you and your overall opinion of Perry as a film maker (and old lady actor). I’m kind of indifferent to his movies not having seen very many and not caring if he plays an old lady sometimes.
Acrimony stars Taraji P. Henson as a woman who is angry at her ex-husband and angry at being thought of as a stereotypical angry black woman. She IS angry though and she assures us in voice over there’s a good reason. She then explains her life and justifies her anger against a man too pretty for her to realize what a snake he is. How he uses her for her mother’s $350,000 inheritance, for her paid-for home and the new mortagage he puts down… all in order to finish a battery he insists will change the world. Henson’s sisters and their husbands are sure he’s a con man but she loves him right off a cliff.
Here’s the interesting thing about this fairly uneven film… we think Henson is the wronged hero of her own movie but we progressively start getting the feeling that maybe the guy isn’t so bad. They turn the tables early – in between her narration saying what a snake he is we also see that he’s having an affair (before their marriage). So we know he’s not innocent… and we see that Henson’s blind rage takes over sometimes, causing her to terrify her boyfriend and put herself in the hospital.
Even if the movie’s production values are low and some shots look weirdly green-screened, I give it credit for some solid acting and a script that’s not one-sided. Both the husband and wife are flawed people… but we are hearing the story from her point of view while seeing it from a neutral audience’s. It’s pretty good scripting…. that is, assuming the movie is playing it the way I’m seeing it. That’s the thing though… usually in a “wronged wife” / “wronged husband” movie, there’s good and there’s bad. So I’m only assuming the intention is to have a murky shade of gray. I’m giving the movie more faith than I had watching it. I was constantly wondering if the movie wanted me to side one way or another but was too incompetent to relay that to the audience.
So I’m half on the fence thinking it’s a clever script when there’s a small change it’s just incompetent. Maybe it’s doing more than its genre would normally suggest. Maybe not. But between the uncertainty and the general low buzz of “this is just ok”, it’s not a strong recommendation in the least. I’m heavily on the fence and could only recommend this flick to Tyler Perry fans, Taraji P. Henson fans, or to Lifetime movie fans.
Score: 71