Acrimony

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Acrimony is the other Tyler Perry movie that came out this year. It centers on a woman named Melinda Gayle (played by Taraji P. Henson). Much of the movie is framed around Melinda telling her history and story to a court appointed therapist. Of the two Tyler Perry movies, this is clearly the better of the two (even if it’s still bad). Much of this goes to the performance by Taraji P. Henson. This woman sells her emotions, especially anger. The movie truly starts to come to life when she is onscreen. It’s hard because she spends most of the movie’s first act narrating. Now, I don’t want to discredit some of the other performers, especially The Flash’s Danielle Nicolet as Melinda’s best friend Sara. This woman does what she can with her unfortunately limited screen time in the film. One of the things this movie made me realize is that Tyler Perry isn’t just a bad director, he’s also a bad screenwriter. A lot of the movie’s dialogue is clunky exposition. There’s also a lot of examples of telling over showing. In other cases, the constant narration would actually explain the visuals we were seeing onscreen. Like every other Tyler Perry movie, this movie crawls along at a snail’s pace. It is dull and plodding. However, it still moved along much faster for me than Nobody’s Fool did because I didn’t find Acrimony insufferable to sit through One of the things I have also come to realize about Tyler Perry’s movies is that they offer no surprises whatsoever. You know that this movie is a mix of the only two kinds of dramas that Tyler Perry ever seems to make. Sappy erotic films where the husband is going to physically and/or emotionally abusive. The other is movies about women wanting to be empowered and want revenge against the man who torments them. The film’s score is generic. It isn’t awful necessarily. However, it feels emotionally manipulative, like it’s solely there to make you feel something. This movie is split up into parts. I don’t know why. It serves no purpose. It isn’t even remotely necessary. If anything, it actually breaks up the movie’s overall flow, and can actually take you out of the movie. I’ve talked a little bit about the use of narration. There’s actually a bigger issue with how it’s used than just stating the obvious. It is actually incredibly distracting. Overall, for as much as I’ve bagged on Acrimony because I didn’t like it, that doesn’t mean I hated it. The best way to describe this movie is mediocre. 

5 / 10