What do you think would happen if nobody attended a Tyler Perry film? Nobody. Every single person in the world including the people who worked on it decided it just wasn’t worth the $10. Do you think he’d stop making movies? My guess is no. It’s hard to picture somebody in a more protective bubble than Tyler Perry. Immune to criticism, facts, trends, reality and national pain, he just keeps doing whatever his pathetic sycophants want. He’s kinda like a black George W. Bush.
My quibble this go-round is about Tyler’s mind-numbingly shallow writing. His The Single Moms Club script has a feel so surface-level that I believed characters who were supposed to have long-standing relationships were actually meeting for the first time. Let’s take the basic plot – five single moms (Nia Long, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Amy Smart, Zulay Henao, Cocoa Brown) all have kids in the same grade at the same private school. This is private school where the kids where fashionable blazers with the school insignia, btw. Adding to Tyler’s massive depth of private school knowledge, when the group of 12-year-olds are caught tagging and smoking on the grounds, their parents are called in and I swear to you – most of them had no idea who the others were.
Are you freaking kidding me? Really? Snooty private school. Kids are what? 12 years old? That’s 7th Grade. And you’ve never met? Ok, maybe they’re ALL middle-school transfers. Sure. That’s possible. But you never met at any of the get-to-know-you arrangements? Not on back-to-school night? Not at school plays or concerts? Ok, ok, so we’re in one of those unique situations where the parents cared enough to send their children to a private school, but didn’t or couldn’t care enough to learn any of their peers or get an idea of who their children would be hanging out with. What bugged me most about the “called into the principal’s office en masse” scene was not the fact that the principal of a snooty high couldn’t run a boy scout meeting, let alone a prestigious school. Nor was I intensely bugged about the fact that the kids did the wrong, so the principal punished their parents by making them run a dance committee together. (Far as I can tell, the kids got off without so much as a warning.) No, what bugged me is that when you got these five women together, not only did they not know one another; they didn’t even care to know one another.
Do I have to repeat that one? Seriously?! You’re women! I’m not even part of the club and I wanted to meet all the parents of my daughter’s classmates; why wouldn’t you? And you’re all single women? What were the freaking odds? And that STILL doesn’t move you in some way? In fact, when Jan Malkovitch. Really, “Jan Malkovitch?!” What did you do Tyler, get a Hollywood press release in the mail and decided that’s how you were gonna name characters from now on? Anyway, when Jan (McLendon-Covey) hosts May (Long) pre-engagement at Jan’s publishing office, the conversation goes something like, “our kids go to the same school, are in the same grade and we have the same appointment with the same person in 20 minutes, huh? Hmmm, interesting. We’re not buying your book. Get out.” Look, I’m trying not to be offended because your writing sucks all the time, but is this how white people behave to you? In the very next scene, Jan even sees, as in personally witnesses within 15 feet, May have car trouble and blows her off. Do you think that’s 
not gonna get back to you, like 20 minutes later?
Humans do not behave like that. No, they don’t. Jan wasn’t the slightest bit interested that they had the same meeting at the same time with the same woman for the same reason. She would rather show open hostility to a peer than bend even the tiniest bit. There’s a shrewdness that goes beyond racism and you, Tyler, never seem to know where the line is. Jan would certainly have helped May out if for no other reason than to make their future meeting go more smoothly.
Well, what can I say? This is a film in which a stay-at-home mom has not realized her daughter hit puberty two months ago. In fact, Tyler Perry also decided that twelve was the universal age at which all kids would start acting like dicks to their moms in general. Hiding one’s first period is simply a small link in the chain of child-mom antagonism demonstrated here. Tyler himself actually had the nerve in his screenplay to have his own character, TK, call another character a “good writer.” How the HELL would you know? The next piece of good Tyler Perry writing will be the first.
Hindered by the clichés weighing down their lives, (yes, Tyler, all white women have money and all Latinos hang out in Mexican restaurants, etc, etc.) the five women eventually overcome their mutual apathy and form The Single Moms Club, so they can get drunk together in the afternoon and hit strip clubs in the evening.Yup; that’s exactly what single moms wanna do. The subtle and not-so-subtle subtext that, strong as they are, these women need men to complete them, is beyond tasteless.
The theme of the film is support and understanding for the trials Single Moms face. I can’t fault Tyler there; he’s a tad lagging, perhaps, in his tribute, but it is a noble one. This feels an apology film; the kind of movie you make to atone for the awful female portrayals you’ve written in past films. For that, Tyler, I salute you and ask that instead of attempting now to repent for the mistakes made in this film, I ask instead that you just stop making films. That would really be much better.
Tyler works in cliché
as a potter works in clay
as Buffy creates a slay
as oils for Manet
I swear I’m going gray
Watching him day-by-day.
Rated PG-13, 111 Minutes
D: Tyler Perry
W: Tyler Perry
Genre: Film you make to get laid
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: A selection of critically-challenged single moms
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Parents of actual living children
