Why Did I Get Married Too

Tyler Perry films are like a balm for the soul--you name it and he has made a film about it. Our clocks seem to be in sync. We seem tuned into the same frequency or something psychic like that. Whatever the reason, when his "I Can Do Bad All By Myself" hit the theatres, he articulated exactly how I was feeling in that moment about life and relationships and why I was so happy to be alone (smile). It was like, misery doesn't need company.

So okay, here I am on Mother's Day, a Mother's Day from hell: no cards, just a few sorry "Happy Mother's Day" messages and texts--I was like, I carried the two of you for nine months for this?!

I couldn't even pretend to be happy about a day, my mother likes to say, children honor their moms.

I think this is the day those women with sons get the breaks. Now turn about isn't fair play when on Father's Day the girls pull out all the stops for dear dad.

So Perry...ta da! is just on time once again. I was hoping his latest venture, a remake or sequel was in some theatre in the San Francisco Bay and I found it screening in two locations nearby. I missed all the early shows and went to the early evening screening and with my senior discount the price wasn't too bad.

Set in the Bahamas where the four couples meet for their vacation and yearly check-in, this time, everyone wasn't doing as well as they were when the film ended in the last installation. This time it was the women who had their pulse on most of the drama, even Jill Scott's character, who after the first installation, should have been too happily married, makes too many errs in judgement. As her husband tells her: it's hard when a woman has had such bad previous relationships. She is often ready to give up at the first sign of conflict.

The therapist and her husband, Janet Jackson and company, is the craziest of all the relationships this time; well if we discount the drama queen drunken wife who doesn't trust her former athlete husband at all. I wonder why he doesn't just call the marriage quits.

Perry's garden of Eden has a snake telling fortunes in it as well when his wife slips and calls his character "Phil." He lets it pass until she brings home flowers with a stick minus the attached note and starts wearing sexy underwear to work.

When the film ends on the beach, the couples in white ... yes, there is a death in this episode... it might remind one of an August Wilson play, but Perry's not in that league.

It's crazy how it happens--the accident. Divorce is ugly, but the ugliness has to do with money and a man dies because of it. Jackson's character, the marriage expert, should have known better, but she didn't. When she lost her son, wasn't that a lesson? What about learning curves? How many balls does one need to miss before one gets it?

I think the best part of the film is on the beach when the couples meet an older couple played by actors: Lou Gossett Jr. and Cicely Tyson. Now their stories about love and marriage and how they made it 50 or so years together, second marriages for both of them, was remarkable. It almost makes one believe in marriage enough to try it--I say almost.

The younger couples don't listen or if they do, the lessons are forgotten as one of their own announces her divorce without consulting with her partner.

Oh, besides death, one of the characters has a terminal illness.

Perry pours the drama on mighty thick, perhaps a bit too thick. I'd like to see the character with the drinking problem address her issues, because they are huge. She is never sober and her husband never calls her on it which is one of the problems with their relationship.

Despite the unevenness of the story, I still liked the film and it helped me get through a horrible day that as I write is almost over. These Hollywood stars who come to the stage or cinema via radio waves with guests like Tyson and Gossett extras when they are the main course, is backward, but so much of life presently is backward, starting with this Mother's Day I am trying to get through.

Twenty minutes left to the day. Five....

Last year I was in Los Angeles with my mother and we had such a lovely weekend--Saturday at the beach pouring libations for the ancestors and Sunday at a wonderful evening of poetry and music in Santa Monica. My mother wasn't feeling like company this weekend and believe it or not, I actually went to a wedding Saturday evening--it was a sweet affair.

I am always cheered by those who take that step, but as for me....

Three minutes to another day....


In the previews Queen Latifah has another film coming to the theatres soon, and Loretta Devine with Ice Cube and come other rap artists called: The Lottery Ticket, and I think I recognized another rap artist (he was in "A Rasin in the Sun")in a stupid looking film about signing talent for a film.