By Malice Intended

At long last, the Oscar nominations were announced yesterday.  Surprises were few, but there was one glaring omission that was rather telling.  For Colored Girls, Tyler Perry’s adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s award winning play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, was completely shut out.  Though it’s still too early to gauge the reaction from his fans, or if there will be any reaction at all, the reasons for this apparent snubbing are more obvious than many will admit.

Pre-release buzz positioned For Colored Girls as an Oscar hopeful.  The flames of optimism were readily doused out when the film began screening for critics.  It currently sits at 33% on the tomatometer over at Rotten Tomatoes.  That already abysmal average plunges another two percent when one clicks on the Top critics tab.  Any hopes for vindication at the box office were likewise put to bed once the receipts were tallied.  For Colored Girls has to date made $37,729,698, putting it on the low end of the Tyler Perry spectrum.

This snub will likely be a non-issue for anyone other than those on the extreme ends of the Tyler Perry debate.  His success has long been a polarizing issue both inside and outside of the black community.  Blacks who have dared criticize the quality of his films and the messages they convey are often dismissed as clueless elitists and race traitors.  White film critics who dismiss his work are dismissed as racists.  It cannot be denied that racism is always a factor in regards to the evaluation of black artists and the works they produce.  In this case however, a very obvious truth most be confronted.  Tyler Perry is a poor filmmaker, and For Colored Girls is not Oscar material.

Filmmaking, even at its most crass and commercial, is an art form.  Everything from the most mindless summer blockbuster to the most ambitious art house film, involves some level of craft or artisanship.  Direction and screenwriting are two invaluable elements of the filmmaking process.  Time and again, Perry has proven himself inept at both.  Even the better films in his oeuvre (Why Did I Get Married, The Family That Preys) are merely adequate when evaluated from a technical standpoint.

It is often suggested that Tyler’s films are labors of love, and that his audience cares more about story than the finer points of filmmaking.  Dialogue, cinematography, lighting, and editing all have an undeniable impact on how a story is received.  Though the audience is not meant to be conscious of the machinations going on behind the curtain, that does not render those workings meaningless or irrelevant.  Plenty of bad films have been made about important subjects.  The way a messenger delivers his message goes a long way in deciding how that message is received.

In the six years since Tyler Perry became a box office force, his formula has earned him the love of fans and the wrath of critics.  For Colored Girls could have been a serviceable launching pad for his vindication.  Its cold reception from critics and middling reception from the public is quite telling.  Tyler was either unwilling or incapable of rising to the occasion.  This is a shame, as his business acumen and understanding of his audience are unparalleled.  Unfortunately, those factors are largely immaterial to the artistic value of his films.     

This is not an indictment of Tyler Perry’s success, or of his fans.  Tyler has every right to continue making his films, just as his fans have the right to continue enjoying them.  One’s taste in film is hardly an effective method for measuring intelligence or sophistication. However, Tyler Perry is, by any reasonable standard, sorely lacking as a filmmaker.  That fact seems to be apparent to all but his staunchest supporters.  For Colored Girls may very well be a step up from his usual output, but it still isn’t worthy of consideration for the highest possible honors to be bestowed upon a film.  The Motion Picture Academy is hardly beyond reproach and their voting process is sometimes very suspect. In this case, however, I have to agree with them.          

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