Diary of a Mad Black Woman: Critic Reviews

Diary is a crock, all right, but a crock made with conviction.

Tyler Perry's movie is so oblivious to genre that it occupies its own special stylistic niche, if you can imagine such a thing as a romantic revenge farce.

To review Diary of a Mad Black Woman is really to review three different movies, none of which is very good.

Blows to the head are delivered with more subtlety than the message of Diary of a Mad Black Woman.

The film detours into an almost Miike-like torture sequence.

It turns on a dime from scenes of maudlin sentimentality to manic slapstick, then turns on another dime to trite Christian moralizing.

The film itself is a touch insane, veering from comedy to cornball melodrama (and torture!) with such startling alacrity that viewers might laugh and not know if they're supposed to.

Mr. Perry's irrepressible energy and rapid-fire wit bring Robin Williams to mind.

Some of these problems stem from the film's leap from a theatrical production's play-to-the-rafters bigness to the screen's demands for something more finessed. There's not a lot of nuance here.

I've been reviewing movies for a long time, and I can't think of one that more dramatically shoots itself in the foot.

Tyler Perry, even if he's no church-show Peter Sellers, obviously carves out some kind of niche here. Remember, they laughed at Ed Wood. And they're still laughing at him.

A very curious and very entertaining mix, the Labradoodle of inspirational romantic-comedy-melodramas.

This movie stew -- equal parts farce, drama and sermon -- gives you plenty to chew on but, ultimately, is less than filling.

The whole thing is a melodrama; there's nothing fatally wrong with that. But the set-ups are so easy and obvious, the humor so broad and the characters such one-dimensional stereotypes that the drama is laughable.

A lot of it shouldn't work -- and doesn't -- but even while you're sitting there, thinking that it can't go much farther off track, it manages to be fairly involving.

Stay clear of this mess.

The low comedy and high melodrama, with a touch of inspiration, don't blend easily, and here the match seems forced.

It's never less than watchable, a bizarre hybrid that somehow works as a whole, even though its various components don't mesh.

It's a cheap melodrama that presses all the right sentimental buttons.

Perry doesn't have any delusions of artistry, and potentially, at least, that's refreshing. But any points he earns for lack of pretense are immediately gobbled up by his lack of subtlety.

In an awkward split-personality way, it works some of the time.

Comic relief is often welcome in drama, but these broad caricatures, which draw easy laughter as the minstrel turns they are, destroy the sense of reality that a large and hardworking cast is otherwise striving to create.

Syrupy drama -- not much here for kids.