It’s that point of 12 months again in Black American when the words “written, directed, and produced by Tyler Perry” flash across hundreds of thousands of televisions, setting off several days of debate in regards to the quality of black cinema and Tyler Perry’s responsibility, two conversations that the majority of us have already completely forgotten. The latest reason for the season is “Divorce While Black,” a relationship-movie-turned-thriller with some seriously solid acting from Meagan Good, Cory Hardrict, Debbi Morgan, and Richard Lawson; Good, Hardrict, and Lawson all recently went through fairly high-profile divorces. That’s not relevant here, but it surely seems like it must be mentioned.

Look, let’s get to the purpose: “Divorce Whispered Black” is a pretty good movie. Not to say that it’s about half-hour too long, but it surely’s a good movie. She plays Ava well, who’s married to Dallas Bertrand (Hardrict), her highschool sweetheart. Ava and Dallas are from a small town about an hour and a half outside of Atlanta. However, Dallas is a member of the Bertrand clan, a local family of criminals and other people nobody likes, led by her mother, who is certainly certainly one of the least liked people in town. I do not quite understand how Dallas and Ava fell in love and ended up getting married, especially since neither Ava’s parents (played by Lawson and Morgan) nor Dallas’ mother approved of their relationship. How they survived that storm is beyond me, especially considering that Dallas also appears to be a terrible person. I feel they need us to consider they’d good times, but even in the one story Ava tells about them, she hints at how vile he was.

I’ll say here that the movie has a problem with time and distance. In the movie, Ava is 37, and she or he and her best friend Rona (played by the recently married Taylor Polidore-Williams of shows like Snowfall and All American: Homecoming) have known one another for 17 years, I feel we met when Ava was 20. I say “I think” because there’s a scene where she and Rona are talking about old times and it feels like they were highschool buddies. Things like that stand out more since the characters also jump backwards and forwards to the “small town” that Ava and Dallas are from, as if it were a suburb of Atlanta.

Either way, in my opinion, Ava and Dallas don’t make much sense, especially since their families don’t approve of one another. The opening scene of the film makes that clear. Ava’s father, Clarence, is the local pastor and is presiding over the funeral service for certainly one of Dallas’ brothers who was shot while committing a crime. Clarence chastises the complete family from the pulpit, and as you’ll be able to imagine, they do not take kindly to that. I’ll spare you the main points, because you actually have to observe the entire thing to know how ridiculous it’s, but it surely’s clear that these families don’t eat dinner together.

The point is that Dallas wants a divorce. Ava gives it to him, after which it becomes something of a thriller. If you have seen another Tyler Perry movie (or another movie for that matter) that involves a woman having to take her life and happiness from a man who won’t let her go; you’ll be able to probably guess where that is going. But let me inform you that despite having a pretty good idea of ​​how it will end, the performances of Lawson (especially) and Hardrict (he’s a great villain) made this a pretty enjoyable ride. There are no noticeable plot holes or total plot twists that make you want you hadn’t watched the remainder of the movie. It’s a story you have seen before, with some good performances. Other than the opening scene and the way wild Dallas’ family is, there are no significant moments where you may have to suspend reality to observe the movie. I feel the bank robbery might have been spiced up a bit (Ava and Rona work at a bank and the heist plot was HERE), but I feel that is just me being greedy.

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Are we turning to Tyler Perry movies? I do not know if he’s heard the criticism and is trying harder or what. I doubt he cares in regards to the critics, but certainly one of the things that made Tyler Perry movies so polarizing and worthy of all this discussion was their stupidity and blatant disregard for reality. Perry has at all times shown a willingness to skip steps to get to the top, even when those steps were crucial for the story to make sense. Perry has now released three movies in a row—”A Jazzman’s Blues,” “Mea Culpa,” “Divorce in the Black”)—that are not bad. They’re not classic movies like “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” or “The Family That Preys” and even “Why Did I Get Married?”, but what movies are, you understand?

I understand that many individuals have a love-hate relationship with Tyler Perry’s movies. I might be very critical of his catalog, but I also watch all of them and I definitely don’t hate his movies. I’m certainly one of the individuals who has consistently asked for them to be higher, given Perry’s vast resources. Maybe that is the direction we’re headed, because Divorce Written in Black wasn’t bad. I watched it with my wife and when it was over we each said, “That wasn’t bad.”

It shall be interesting to see what the response to Divorce W/Noir is. Most of the conversation about Perry’s movies is “Why aren’t they better?” or “What did you expect from Tyler Perry other than a bad film?” Well, this is best and never a bad film. Would I watch it again? Only time will tell. But Divorce W/Noir is a ok film that might have used the bank robbery, but it surely’s nice without it.

That already means something.