Smart and sassy performances make 'Diary' worthwhile

By Eleanor O'Sullivan
Asbury Park, (N.J.) Press

DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN (PG-13) Two and One-Half Stars (Fair-to-Good) Helen McCarter (Kimberly Elise) discovers her husband wants a divorce in "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," a film by popular black playwright Tyler Perry, in a bravura performance that's funny and smart, too. Steve Harris, Shemar Moore and Cicely Tyson star for first time director Darren Grant. Lions Gate, 116 minutes.

If "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," about a young woman who searches her soul and her relatives' religious roots for strength, had been all about Perry, wow, what a movie.

But it's not. Perry, who wrote and adapted the movie from his play, portrays the young woman's sassy grandmother, granny's dirty old man brother, and the woman's regular guy brother. It's a bravura performance that's funny and smart, too. Does it matter that Perry is stealing Eddie Murphy's "Nutty Professor" multiple role idea? Nah.

The more the merrier.

The young woman, Helen, has been literally thrown out of her huge mansion in Atlanta by her cheating hubby (Steve Harris), who has a girlfriend and two children on the side. Do we have a problem with Helen not noticing this situation?

Well, yeah.

But this reality-stretching development brings Perry front and center into the scenario as the profane, riotous Madea, who takes Helen in and exposes her to "life in the ghetto" (in reality, a pleasant middle-class neighborhood). Helen meets a really cute man named Orlando (Shemar Moore), who courts her during her estrangement from the hideous hubby.

Meanwhile, Helen wanders around town looking for answers to her wimp factor personality, and whenever the cheating but hugely rich hubby needs her, she jumps. All the good people in her life try to help her build backbone: Madea is her wise-cracking common sense mentor, while Cicely Tyson is her church-going, Bible-observing mother.

Helen, as portrayed by the versatile Kimberly Elise, grows at a slow, painstaking pace, and the script avoids acknowledging that Helen is hung up on material goods. That's really what keeps her with the abusive hubby.

Her journey includes a half dozen visits to the neighborhood church, where parishioners sing mightily and joyfully; next to Perry's terrific bits as Madea, the church sequences make the movie. Darren Grant's directorial touch isn't as sound as Perry's comic instincts; the movie's tone shifts almost from scene to scene — solemn, rueful, slap-happy, uplifting, harrowing, romantic, and back again through that cycle. Well, it certainly keeps you alert.

In his writing, Perry seems to be lumping together two schools of influence: "Diary of a Mad Housewife" (1970), the saga of an upper middle-class white woman's humiliation by men, with the recent body of films about strong black women who struggle with the male-female relationship.

"Diary of a Mad Black Woman" is a hybrid that's not altogether successful, but it offers us a feature-length look at Tyler Perry, who is a success, big time.

Rated PG-13 for drug theme, language, sexual references, violence.

Eleanor O'Sullivan is the film critic for the Asbury Park, (N.J.) Press.