Divorce in the Black review

Divorce in the Black isn’t the worst film Tyler Perry released all year. That distinction is still proudly owned by Mea Culpa. It’s not for lack of a really sincere effort though. If it wasn’t for the fact that Mea Culpa was Perry’s career-defining ode to awful, Divorce in the Black might have had a chance.

Mea Culpa was a mesmerizing mess where logic, eroticism and unbelievable characters and scenarios go to die or get buried under portraits.

Divorce in the Black is more like watching five seasons of a terrible soap opera crammed into a laughingly awful two hours.

Credit Perry, who directs, writes and produces this fiasco, for revealing early on that this was not going to be some logical course correction film. It is not.

Pastor Clarence (Richard Lawson) is presiding at a funeral basically telling the congregation that the deceased was a no-good dawg that deserved to die. Understandably, the deceased’s mother Linda (Ursula O. Robinson) isn’t happy with this eulogy. And then she takes it a bit too far having her other sons leave the casket, take the body. It’s an incredulous, sadly typical Perry scene that goes overboard on the melodrama.

Ava (Meagan Good, Shazam: Fury of the Gods) is mortified at her father’s eulogy. Her husband, Dallas (Cory Hardrict) is less enthused as he helps carry his brother out of the church. Dallas is clearly a loser with little redeeming qualities — the usual portrayal for the awful man in a Perry film.

That’s the norm for Perry dramas — a weak woman chasing after a weaker dude before finally getting her sense of self in stories rejected by Lifetime for being too absurd. In this case, Ava goes to her in-law’s trailer park home to see the backhoe has dug up a grave for the dead brother. That’s gotta be against 40 health regulations.

Ava sorta blames her devotion to the marriage based on the example set by Pastor Clarence and her mother, Gene (Debi Morgan, a good actress stuck in these awful soap opera roles).

For all of his experience writing scripts, Perry has yet to master the art of laying the groundwork for his stories. Dallas starts off like a jerk and is so over the top cruel it’s just unrealistic to see why Ava would stay with him.

There’s some throwaway lines and a quickie flashback about Dallas’ past, but it’s nowhere near enough to justify why Awa would wallow in this miserable relationship. Worse, Perry writes Ava like a glutton for punishment under the guise of wanting to be a good wife. This all comes to a head when Dallas blurts out in an angry rage over dinner that he wants a divorce. Perry has done absolutely nothing to suggest why that’s a bad thing.

Ava’s BFF Rona (Taylor Polidore) and her henpecked husband Jim (Shannon Wallace) are on board with her moving on too after getting a front row seat to the mayhem. In a totally realistic manner, Ava’s parents immediately start pushing another high school friend, Benji (Joseph Lee Anderson).

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Perry doesn’t have time for the necessary healing process in these terrible relationships and always makes the woman come off like she’s looking for a quick rebound. There’s some token dialogue about self-care, but be careful on the whiplash from Perry’s original portrayal of Ava. She’s such a devoted spiritual wife that she willingly stays in an abusive marriage and then on a dime is ready to hook up in her living room.

Good can only do so much with this material. Perry writes Ava too inconsistent, but Good does decent work with all these variations of Ava throughout the film. Lawson seems to have the most fun while poor Hardrict doesn’t get to add any layers or depth to Dallas.

Time and distance stop mattering after a while too. Ava is 90 minutes away from her folks until Perry decides that’s just a drive up the block. There’s a hilarious scene where Clarence and Linda show Ava some old home videos.

Obviously, the editing is ridiculous as the tape shifts from elementary school accomplishments to high school achievements with just a few flicks of the fast forward button. Also, how does her parents have a working VHS???

Dallas somehow gets confused and now wants to get back with Ava. Seeing Ava with Benji is also triggering. It’s a complete mystery how Dallas is getting these pictures unless his brothers are covert FBI spies in their free time from causing mayhem in the town.

Perry doesn’t normally try to direct too intense an action scene and those here show why that’s the case. The editing is clunky, and the physical strikes don’t seem especially convincing.

Divorce in the Black’s opening act was bizarre, but at least it was memorable. The rest of the film can’t muster up that kind of inspired craziness and is just one messy scene after another.

Rating: 3.5 out of 10

Photo Credit: Amazon