Mark Goes To the Movies: Diary of a Mad Black Woman

Diary of a Mad Black Woman (dir. Darren Grant) Forget The Jacket. Cool movie, but you want to see the most subversive thing on the screen, go see this. (You semiologists and Charlie Kaufman fans will go nuts checking all of the connections of race, religion, gender, esp. the collisions.) Basically it's two movies not-too-expertly pasted together. One is a pretty but S-L-O-W romance between two pretty people who keep bouncing in and out of relationships but only sleep with people they're married to. The other is a bunch of colorful nutcases around tribal elder Medea, expertly played by resident Orson Welles on Cough Syrup Tyler Perry. She's the kick-ass aunt everyone wants, and she's got your back with a 9mm pistol if that's what it takes. Perry also does a hilarious Cedric the Entertainer ripoff in another (male) character. Of course it's also explicitly Christian, but it's the kind of Christian that understands that sometimes people aren't designed to be married forever, that being a Christian means taking care of those you consider family, that it's okay for women to work and to be outspoken, strong characters; that it's not a wife's duty to continue absorbing abuse from her husband. (That's the kind of Christian I can get with--also with the gospel kind). Then it veers from spiritual contemplation to a revenge fantasy out of Lifetime Movie Network to a sequence where Medea destroys all her ex-son-in-law's expensive furniture with a chainsaw. Compared with some of the alternatives out there, I can live with this version just fine. Markie Review (stupid points): ????