Tyler Perry has a formula that works, and he doesn’t change it. Every film he does or play he writes, Perry focuses on the struggles of women, relationships, cheating, abuse, and finding God again. So all of Perry’s movies can be predictable because we know the end will be a happy one, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if your movie is going to start and end the same way as your other movies, then it all comes down to the performances of your actors. Perry found the perfect woman to carry his movie: Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Hustle and Flow).
I Can Do Bad All By Myself is about a selfish woman named April (Henson). She likes to sing, which is a good thing but she likes to drink as well. A little too much. She is in love with Raymond, a married man who pays for the house she lives in. There is no real love in their relationship. April’s life changes when her sister’s kids show up on her doorstep thanks to Madea (Perry).
Sixteen-year-old Jennifer and her two young brothers break in to Madea’s house, and she finds out they have been raised by her grandmother and she has been missing for several days. So Madea finds April, their aunt, and she wants nothing to do with him. They are her sister’s kids and her sister died due to drugs. So April nor the kids have had an easy life.
But using the formula that Perry uses, you can probably guess that April finds God and gets to know her sister’s kids. And they all change each other’s lives with the help of Sandino (Adam Rodriguez), a handy man who lives in April’s basement because of the church practically demanding him to help her, and I dare suggest they fall in love. I am not going to ruin it for anyone and tell you how it ends, however, I think you can probably guess it if you have ever seen a Tyler Perry movie in your life.
What I enjoyed most about this movie is Taraji P. Henson. Perry has been able to get some good actors in his past few movies. He managed to get Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige to co-star in this, but Henson is the force behind this movie. Knight and Blige are there for support and to sing and put on several concerts during the movie. Sometimes the movie feels like half-dramedy, half-concert event.
But Henson brings so much emotion to April. Henson really makes an effort to show the suffering and hurt her character is going through. The movie is inspiring, but it’s because of Henson’s performance that you believe it. I Can Do Bad All By Myself falls to predictability, but the message is a good one and his main star is a great one.
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“Nature Boy” Brandon Vick is the resident film critic of the SoBros Network, and star of Brandon’s Box Office In Your Mouth. Follow him on Twitter@SirBrandonV and be sure to search #VicksFlicks for all of his latest movie reviews.
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