Tennessee (**3/4)

Brothers (Adam Rothenberg, Ethan Peck) trek east from New Mexico in this low-key drama. On the way, they meet a waitress in a diner (Mariah Carey) whose husband has become abusive. Although there is also abuse in the background of the brothers—their father is the reason they fled—the movie has nothing new to say on that subject. It’s all about brotherly love. The older of the two, once a protector, has become alcoholic. The younger one is sick, which is, indirectly, why they are returning to Tennessee. What they will find there is what drives the plot. Director Aaron Woodley favors a still camera and subdued lighting to such an extent that it’s monotonous, despite some painterly tableaux. The only music is Carey, humming to herself and, later, warbling a tune she wrote with Willie Nelson in a singer-songwriter style not common on her records. The conclusion is satisfying if you don’t like having every loose knot tied up.

IMDB link

viewed 6/4/09 (screening at Ritz 5); reviewed 6/19/09

Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion (**3/4)

Perry’s comic “mad black housewife” returns, but mixed in with a romance and melodrama involving two of her nieces. The plot is trite but the characters are pretty good.

Madea was the title character of the critically lambasted but popular Diary of a Mad Black Housewife. As played by writer-director Perry in drag, she’s the same sort of comical character as Momma in the Big Momma’s House movies, except without an alter ego. She’s feisty but supposedly wise, although her solution to most problems seems to involve whacking somebody upside the head. But she—and her elderly brother, also played by Perry—are only in about a third of the movie. The other two thirds are taken up by her nieces, and these stories are straight soap opera, for better and worse. There’s the younger daughter (Rochelle Aytes), afraid to escape a fiancé (Blair Underwood) who beats her, and her older sister (a convincing Lisa Arrindell Anderson), afraid to believe that the ridiculously handsome bus driver who asks her out could be a nice guy.

The mixture of pathos and very broad comedy is mildly jarring. Judging by the guffaws I heard during the Madea parts, I probably thought a little less of the humor than some. The plotting is ordinary. But there were some interesting things, things you don’t see too often in typical movies. (Read: movies where white people have speaking parts.) For example, you probably don’t see an older woman beating a child’s behind, not played for laughs, anyway. You don’t see the romantic lead tell his date that he’s a Christian, or her telling him she’s staying celibate until marriage (and meaning it). You don’t see Cicely Tyson make an interminably weird speech about how the young’uns have forgotten family and black men need to be strong. Finally, you don’t get to see what must be the tackiest wedding since the Britney Spears-Jason Alexander Vegas quickie.

IMDb link

posted 9/11/13