Tyler Perry

  • Why Did I Get Married Too? (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) I’m not going to be too hard on writer-director Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too?, because the film is slightly more aware of what it’s trying to do than its prequel. Picking up a few years after the previous film, this one once again sends four couples to a holiday destination (trading snowy Colorado for a Bahamas resort) where various secrets and resentments bubble up to the surface (again) and threaten their couples (again). Once more, the film only spends a fraction of its time at the holiday resort, and gets its characters back in their lives for the remainder of the film. Having been written for the screen, this sequel doesn’t have the same claim to theatrical space/time unity as the first film, and doesn’t spend as long at the secluded location—so the shift back to a multi-set approach isn’t as severe, even if it’s still clunky. Most of all, though, is that the characters are more sharply defined, with some of them clearly intended to be comic character. The ever-gorgeous Tasha Smith, for instance, plays a character clearly not meant to be on the same level of realism as the other couples, and her over-the-top screeching arguments with her husband (escalating to a very funny scene in which she shoots a gun in her own house) are played for laughs more than drama. The contrast between her fight scenes and other fight scenes rather works—although it does show Perry going back to his usual writing style, in which he can’t keep his tone consistent. Smith’s character clearly went from grating to amusing, though… which is more than I can say for other characters in the film. I was aghast, for instance, at Perry’s insistence on painting Janet Jackson’s character as a victim—for instance, in not splitting writing income equally even as her husband’s income is on the table (under Quebec law, she would clearly lose that claim). The film then does on to portray her becoming increasingly unhinged until a tragic death… for which she doesn’t even get blamed. In fact, the film hands her Dwayne Johnson as a surprise reward in the film’s last scene, which leaves a sour taste. Jackson gets both one very good glass-smashing scene and one very bad car-smashing one under that subplot, which is about par for the course in Perry’s uneven writing. Perry’s direction is also frustratingly inconsistent: He’s willing to go for two memorable one-shots, for instance, but unable to provide even a contextual medium shot during lengthy conversation scenes. And so it goes—some material is incredibly predictable, while other plot points seem to scream SURPRISE with a deliberate avoidance of foreshadowing, and one inexplainable appearance by a character from the previous film that makes no sense except as a screenwriter’s contrivance. The ending certainly feels far too convenient, sweeping under the rug a number of issues that should have been resolved in more organic ways. Why Did I Get Married Too? Is a slightly better film than its predecessor—buoyed by three years’ worth of additional cinematic experience for Perry, plus his entertainer’s instincts to give the fans what they’re expecting. It’s a bit of a shame for the characters that, by appearing in a sequel, they’re guaranteed to have a bad time—but that’s the movies.

  • Why Did I Get Married? (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Youtube Streaming, February 2022) There’s something admirable Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?, as it looks at factors threatening the marriage of four middle-class couples when they head to an isolated cabin to reflect on the state of their relationships. This is one of Perry’s first straight-up dramas without the Madea crutch, and there’s a sense that he’s really giving a serious go at romantic drama. Placing the four couples in the pressure-cooker of a mountain retreat right before a major snowstorm may not be an original plot device, but it has the merit of raising the film’s tension and promising a dramatic arc in the finest theatrical tradition. Unfortunately, Perry’s blunt-force approach does him no favour, and the problems start early on with four heavy-handed scenes that don’t present characterization as much as caricature. There’s no way to get emotionally invested in a couple whose husband is callous enough to make his overweight wife drive the trip he’s taking on a plane (while enjoying the company of her single attractive friend), or to completely believe in a character going on a verbal rampage aboard a crowded train. (There are also other issues whenever you ask yourself why four couples living close together would take four different ways to get to the same destination, but digging too deeply in the film does no one any favours.)  The writing is uneven, and few of the actors (including Perry in a dramatic turn) are gifted enough to rise above the material—except perhaps Jill Scott in the film’s richest character. The lack of subtlety means that much of the film plays like a dramatic exercise more than a story, and Tyler fumbles the last half of the film by having characters leave the cabin and time-skip forward to resolve (or not) their issues—breaking the spatial and chronological unity of the piece. The film’s got enough heart to warrant watching to the end, but it’s often a rough road—although that’s a near-constant for most Perry films even if you’re predisposed to like them.

  • Madea’s Big Happy Family (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) You can feel the irony of Madea’s Big Happy Family titling very early on. Not just because happy families don’t make for good movies, but because writer-director-producer-star Tyler Perry is once again being as unsubtle about it as anyone can humanly be. As a mother receives a terminal cancer diagnosis, her attempts to tell her family about her condition are all sabotaged by unruly characters, simmering resentment, long-held secrets and cheap screenwriting tricks. Madea comes in to save the day with some tough love, but she doesn’t quite get it all right, and as the film goes through Perry’s atonal storytelling, there’s a big tragic moment to make the film come into focus. How you feel about the result will depend on your familiarity with what Perry is doing and your ability to like it even in small bits and pieces. He has his moments as a writer-director—the “Byroooooon” thing is as crude a comic device as possible, but it gets a laugh nearly every time. (Props to Lauren London for committing to such a character.) Madea’s overreach this time gets her to drive through a restaurant window, which also gets a laugh even if it’s an expected one. Perry’s theatrical background serves him well in structuring the narrative, in which tension points are gradually exposed and pressured. He also gets the atmosphere of a fractious Atlanta-area family and some decent character work from a variety of actors—including Loretta Devine as the ill-fated mother. As far as Perry movies go, Madea’s Big Happy Family is somewhere in the middle of a fairly narrow band—good if you like his material despite its flaws, but not something different enough to make converts.

  • Madea Goes to Jail (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) I’m not going to seriously claim that Madea Goes to Jail isn’t truth in titling (because she does indeed go to jail), but it approaches misrepresentation when about two thirds of the film isn’t about Madea’s imprisonment, but rather an adjacent story about a likable District Attorney: one of his ex-flame is in serious trouble and his current girlfriend is proving herself to be a terrible person. I’m not blaming writer-director Tyler Perry, though: As a title, Madea Goes to Jail is infinitely catchier than anything else, and keeping her as a comic supporting character is a wise choice given how much space she takes in any story. Still, the bait-and-switch does hint at the film’s biggest issue and an ongoing problem in Tyler’s filmography: the wild swerves between tones that are a constant feature of his work. Madea is an out-and-out comic character: grander than life, caricatural in conception and not necessarily able to sustain the weight of a dramatic story. Meanwhile, we’ve got a story of characters suffering from drug addiction, past guilt, being trapped in prostitution and eventually being carelessly thrown under by the judicial system. But such things are to be expected in Tyler Perry’s films—you get the pathos and the laughs and never mind the transitions. It doesn’t quite work in totality, but it does have moments. Tyler, as a director, is unremarkable—but as a writer he relies on blunt force and occasionally succeeds: even if you can wish for the experience to be smoother, he ultimately gets his goal. In Madea Goes to Jail, it means that the female protagonist is portrayed with sympathy and layers, while the female antagonist is a caricaturally terrible person with no redeeming qualities beyond her looks. Ah well—but as the title suggests, the film’s most interesting moments come from Madea as she unleashes righteous fury on people who annoy her or threaten her friends. (One of them, a serial killer, is played by a pre-stardom Sofia Vergara.)  As, once again, the very specific title suggests, this is a film for those willing to forgo the flaws in Perry’s films and enjoy the high points.

  • Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) While not personally directed by Tyler Perry, Diary of a Mad Black Woman is clearly a Perry movie, and his first as well—he wrote it, and makes his big-screen debut(s) as a lawyer, an elderly man and Madea herself. The film comes straight from his prior theatrical experience and box-office receipts—Perry’s life and rise to notoriety will one day be the topic of a movie, and I expect that this film will be a major turning point. It certainly exhibits in even rawer form than usual the trademarks of Perry’s later career: the brute-force melodramatic style of his movies, the awkward blend of funny and serious scenes, the role of spirituality, the earnest romantic material, the importance he places on female characters, and—most strikingly of all—the place that his Madea character would occupy in his work. As the film begins, our narrator (a rich, pampered wife of a respected lawyer) finds herself kicked to the curb in an absurdly over-the-top sequence in which her belongings are stuffed in a moving van, her husband’s side-chick moves in her formerly palatial house (along with two mentioned-but-never-seen kids) and she finds herself abruptly homeless on their 18th wedding anniversary. Seeking refuge with Madea launches the Madeaverse in a broader sense, and leads to the film’s funniest sequence in which Madea goes for some tough-love chainsaw-powered retribution (which then, less joyously, results in the first of her many skirmishes with the law). The rest of Diary of a Mad Black Woman goes high and low in the search for self-fulfillment and forgiveness of its main character—and she’s certainly not portrayed as a saint considering that some of the third-act wild turns have her become an abuser. There’s some great material here, although it’s presented in very raw form: While Darren Grant directs efficiently, this is Perry’s show—the story often can’t focus, goes through wild mood swings, does not deal in execution subtleties even when it tackles challenging material, and does offer decent showcases for its actors. Kimberly Elise is not bad in the lead role, while Steve Harris does get some rough material to play as her near-ex-husband. Cicely Tyson appears for a few scenes as the protagonist’s mother, foreshadowing Perry’s gift for casting great actors in later films. Diary of a Mad Black Woman probably plays better now than it did in 2005—Perry is now a known quality and a certifiable success, so this works better as a piece of juvenilia than a calling card for a new talent. If you’re a fan of the Madeaverse, it’s decent-enough entertainment: at least you know what flaws to expect.

  • A Madea Christmas (2013)

    A Madea Christmas (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) Tyler Perry goes Christmasy with A Madea Christmas, heading to a small town that is having problems putting up a Christmas show, and to a newlywed interracial couple receiving their parents for the holidays. While the guests include two jovial white redneck parents (one of them played by Larry the Cable Guy) and one black mother, Perry makes an interesting choice in having the mother being the one with racist issues preventing her from appreciating her daughter’s happiness. There’s a Big Lie to unravel along the way (the white husband initially being presented to her as “the help”) and some perfunctory anti-corporate rhetoric to unravel in town, but the rest of A Madea Christmas is rather straightforward. Occasionally highlights include the comic upmanship between Perry-as-Madea and Larry the Cable Guy: You wouldn’t think that two comic personas would mesh well—but they do, and I have a feeling (bolstered by the end credits outtakes) that Perry was unusually generous in letting the other actor ad-lib some of the best replies. (There’s also an unusually witty scripted line in “When she had them dreams, was they in color or black-and-white?”)  Perry’s approach here is very familiar, with Madea used rather well in a supporting role that allows her to play the troubleshooter. The family drama is usually more interesting than the fights with other neighbours or the small-town attempts to put on a Christmas show. Tika Sumpter looks terrific as one half of the interracial couple, but other than Larry the Cable Guy, this is not a film that plays in elaborate casting. A Madea Christmas is far too often too blunt to be any good, but it gets to its Christmas-spirit through an unusual path, and at this point I’m such a Madea fan that “more of the same” sounds like a good deal to me, especially in the indulgent lead-up to Christmas.

  • Boo! A Madea Halloween (2016)

    Boo! A Madea Halloween (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) No one can make a case that Boo: A Madea Halloween is a particularly good movie. Even in writer-director-producer Tyler Perry’s filmography, it’s a bit clunky, far-fetched, obvious and trite. But I nonetheless found it fascinating—it manages to have a Halloween comedy for an adult audience without supernatural or overly violent elements in the end. It plays to a small-c-conservative crowd, but skirts the edges of having a comedy set-piece set in a church, and reinforces family values in its conclusion after going through a tough-love phase. Perry himself plays three roles, two of them the thesis/antithesis of what familial love means for the teenage protagonist of the film. Dismissing Perry’s films is easy, but they end up being fascinating in their own way. If Boo: A Madea Halloween feels slapdash and basic at times, it’s explained by an astonishing 6-day shooting schedule—that’s not a lot of time to finesse details, let along build some visual interest along the way or whittle down the film to its core. As Madea, Perry is not bad—and there are plenty of comedic curveballs to distract from some obvious messaging about fatherly love and protection. (It’s refreshing, in a way, to see the college-age party animals react rationally when they discover that the heroines are underage—the girls suddenly become as if radioactive to the fratboys, and that’s a clear sign that the film is not going to go there.)  It’s unfortunate that Perry’s writing can be lazy, or that the tone of the film goes everywhere without control. Of course, at this point in my exploration of Perry’s filmography, I’m essentially a convinced fan—not necessarily a member of his core audience, but someone who’s quite willing to play along.

  • The Family That Preys (2008)

    The Family That Preys (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) Anyone wondering about Tyler Perry’s early-film-career strengths and weaknesses (not that there’s been much of a change since then) can always have a look at The Family that Preys, a middle-of-the-road effort that does feature the usual highs and lows of his film work. On the good side, we have a heartfelt look at black characters, with an emphasis on female characters. There are effective sequences supporting a strong sense of humanist morality, religion and family. There’s often (but not always) a clear-cut distinction between good people and bad ones, with the virtuous getting their rewards at the end. He manages to attract very interesting acting talent, and his flair for populist entertainment is far better than most other filmmakers, especially in playing to his specific audience. His penchant for melodramatic plotting (in the neutral sense of the expression) makes for easy, sometimes even engaging viewing—it’s easy to sit down and be swept in the story, even as blatantly plotted as it can be. On the other hand, his excesses are also here—a lack of a clear theme that leads to an unwieldy, sprawling structure that barely sits down to work out its own ideas. The writing is not very elegant (that “memory card” bit is, wow) and the points it makes are not subtle at all. Even the film’s striking moments (such as a man slapping his adulterous wife, portrayed as justified, or a homeless person being revealed as very important) seem very calculated. The caricatural nature of the antagonists is often too broad to be credible (the adulterous son even booking the same hotel room as his adulterous father!) and you know within moments who you’re dealing with—a woman putting down her man’s dreams is obviously up to no good, right? And yet, The Family that Preys rather works if you’re willing to be forgiving. The cast certainly helps—Kathy Bates effortlessly dominates the film as a matriarch, and her rapport with a splendid Alfre Woddard is one of the film’s highlights even if their subplot seems contrived and out-of-place. Sanaa Lathan is wonderfully detestable as the female villain, while pre-stardom Taraji P. Henson plays her good sister, Robin Givens has a striking smaller role and Perry himself has a small role as a construction worker. The ending is a lot of righteous fun to watch, as people get what they deserve from an old-school moralistic standpoint. Blunt but crowd-pleasing, Perry’s films are far more interesting than their critical reputation (largely forged by movie critics outside his intended audience) would suggest. I’m having a surprising amount of fun going through his filmography, even when the films are less than wonderful.

  • Meet the Browns (2008)

    Meet the Browns (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) As is customary for early Tyler Perry movies, there are a lot of familiar elements at play in Meet the Browns: A single mother struggling to keep her kids out of trouble; a suddenly deceased father; a return from Chicago to the south in order to reunite with a family she didn’t know; a tall-dark-handsome romantic prospect with a troubled past; an ex that just won’t stay in his place; street gang drug dealing; and Madea for not much more than a cameo. In execution, it all feels slap-dash: the tone jumps from comedy to drama to romance, the film fails to capitalize on many of its assets (the house renovation, which could have been a powerful thematic device in other hands, is here completely glossed over) and the dialogue can be dryly ordinary. But that’s not necessarily the case throughout: For instance, a sequence in which the patriarch enumerates all of the deceased father’s “hoes” is their scandalous diversity in front of his surviving family is a delightful comic highlight. Angela Basset looks amazing and gives life to her role as the lead; and the morals of the film are in the right place. Sofia Vergara also shows up in a pre-stardom role. I did like the ensemble of characters quickly sketched in straightforward scenes, and the romance is crudely effective in its own way. It makes for likable if imperfect viewing, the kind of thing that works best in a series (as in: “Tyler Perry movies”) than by itself, where it feels slightly too small and incomplete. Case in point: The Madea cameo feels gratuitous and disconnected by itself, but is meant as a lead-in to the next film in the series. On to the next one, then…

  • For Colored Girls (2010)

    For Colored Girls (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) Adapting a theatrical play that relies on the strengths of that medium to the big screen in a risky exercise, and writer-director Tyler Perry doesn’t make things easy for himself in choosing to impose his vision on a fiercely feminist work. You can certainly feel the clunkiness at play when the film shifts gears from a rather straightforward (if harsh) melodrama to flights of eloquent soliloquies as the characters give voice to their innermost thoughts. As an ensemble movie with many ongoing subplots, For Colored Girls gets both the benefits of the form and its drawbacks — it can boast of a stellar cast in Janet Jackson, Loretta Devine, Thandie Newton, Kerry Washington and Whoopi Goldberg, plus a pre-stardom Tessa Thompson… I mean, wow. On the other hand, with no less than ten lead characters, the development of the subplots can be abrupt and sketchy. Coupled with Perry’s intentional lack of directorial flair and sometimes on-the-nose writing, it does make the film creak in places, and the accumulated melodrama (which gets absurdly dark in places) flirts dangerously with unintentional amusement. The biggest irony is that the film truly becomes magical in its most theatrical moments, as the women give voice to the stage soliloquies and unload the meaning of the stage play’s original title for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. (You can read some of the soliloquies, but they’re far from being as effective as when heard from actresses who get the cadence of the words.)  If nothing else, the film will make you wonder if you can find and listen to the original. It would be easy to focus on the film’s structural and directorial shortcomings — there’s something in Perry’s traditionalism that feels out of place (it’s hard not to notice that the film’s sole gay character is a self-loathing liar who gives AIDS to his wife — yikes) even as the film is a powerful progressive work by itself. Some of the weirdness even comes from the original play — it makes sense for all of the male characters (at one minor exception with little screen time) to be evil and destructive, considering the intent of the work to focus on women’s lives at their lowest point. Still, I rather like the result: It’s a wonderful showcase for the actresses involved, and when the film takes flight, it does carry the power of the original work. Even a decade and many more black-women-focused films later in a far more diverse cinematic landscape, For Colored Girls still packs some punch.

  • Madea’s Tough Love (2015)

    Madea’s Tough Love (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) In my ongoing project to watch more of Tyler Perry’s filmography, I’ve been a bit too trigger-happy on the DVR recordings and that’s how I ended up with animated film Madea’s Tough Love on my to-watch list. To be clear — Madea’s Tough Love is and isn’t a Perry movie: He produced it, voices Madea and even plays her in the framing of live-action scenes, but someone else wrote and produced it. The intended audience of the film is a bit of a mess, as Madea ends up having to do community service and ends up taking over a community centre to save it from destruction. There are a lot of kid characters, but the tone (and Madea’s overall attitude as a disciplinarian) are more aimed at adults. Having the film being animated allows it to take flights of fancy in wilder sequences impossible to do well in live action, including a wild chase with hydraulic-powered cars. It’s all mildly amusing and perhaps revelatory about Madea’s character, but it’s still a blessing that the film clocks in at a slim 64 minutes: it doesn’t overstay its welcome even in its predictability. Still, I’m ready to get back to live-action Perry, even if it means enduring him in drag.

  • Nobody’s Fool (2018)

    Nobody’s Fool (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) My ongoing effort to watch Tyler Perry’s filmography took a strange turn with Nobody’s Fool. Just as I was thinking I had a handle on Perry’s approach (a pedestrian, PG-rated paean to traditional values as filtered through the black American experience), here comes a film that opens with a lascivious midriff shot and features Tiffany Haddish loudly rutting in the back of a pickup to conclude the film’s opening moments. Yes — upon verification, Nobody’s Fool is Perry’s first R-rated feature, and one that is associated with a major studio (Paramount) and with better-known actors (notably Haddish, but also Whoopi Goldberg, and a showy one-scene wonder by Chris Rock). In other words — this isn’t your usual Perry film, and Haddish’s typically exuberant presence almost bends the gravity of the production toward her. As a result, Nobody’s Fool often feels unbalanced: While Tika Sumpter does her best to lead the cast as a no-nonsense urban professional, Haddish steals every scene and is more often than not where all of the film’s R-rating material comes from. If she feels like an intrusion in Perry’s usually more mannered world, that’s probably not by accident. (Once I know more about Perry’s filmography, I’ll be able to confirm a suspicion — that her role in this film is not dissimilar to the studious transgression that Perry allows himself when playing Madea.)  It’s all interesting, but not quite enough to make the film successful. While there are bits and pieces of good ideas here (most notably its blend of rehabilitation, romantic comedy, and catfishing-or-not mystery), they don’t quite gel together satisfyingly. There’s a notable amount of idiot plotting going on, contrived to maintain suspense for far too long, followed by an obvious narrative cheat in resolving a romantic triangle by showing how one partner is suddenly completely unsuitable in the bedroom. Almost as if the film had no interest whatsoever in honestly resolving its own tension. Considering that Nobody’s Fool doesn’t have much in terms of stylistic execution, another rewrite would have been really helpful.

  • The Single Moms Club (2014)

    The Single Moms Club (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) For all of the well-deserved criticism Tyler Perry gets about his work as a writer-director, there’s a lot to be said about his willingness to feature female protagonists, focus on their issues and propose on female-led casts. Some will say that this is a winning commercial strategy for the kinds of films he makes, and while it’s hard to disagree with that, the results still speak for themselves. The Single Moms Club finds him in mostly-dramatic mode, avoiding the pitfalls of the Madea-led comedies to focus on five single mothers brought together by an incident of school vandalism. Forced together, they find some strength in leaguing against their problems. While this could have gone in several directions, those who are familiar with Tyler’s work won’t be particularly surprised or disappointed to find out that the result is more schematic and melodramatic than anything else. The problems confronted by the ensemble cast of protagonists are not particularly novel or wittily presented: Perry is into brute-force melodrama and one can almost see him schematize his characters’ issues based on a list of the top ten complaints by single mothers. The cast is largely but not exclusively black, with the five titular single moms being split in various ethnicities — and with a few class issues as well. Perry’s streak in working with good and interesting actors continues here, with Nia Long, Amy Smart and Terry Crews being part of the cast. (Meanwhile, Perry also has a supporting role as a likable character.)  The Single Moms Club is not great cinema — at best, it’s a serviceable daytime-TV film that, to its credit, believes in people acting kindly and has the decency to end on a positive note. (Although pairing up every single female character with a man undermines the strong-independent-woman thing that the film may have gone for.) For Perry fans, it’s a less flashy example of a routine kind of work for him — albeit one that does show his continued sympathy for women’s issues and his ability to work with actresses. It may not get much respect, but it’s not something to dismiss too quickly.

  • Vice (2018)

    Vice (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, December 2019) As a non-American US political junkie, Vice is my kind of movie: An exuberant, engaged, clever and uncompromising look at a contemporary political figure that makes no apologies for its critical viewpoint. Taking on the unusual life of Richard “Dick” Cheney from early struggles to the vice-presidency of the United States, Vice is a lot more than a standard biopic: Through various impressionist devices, it gets to discuss the decades-long machinations of the Republican Party in consolidating power for power’s sake, the perils of Unitary Executive Theory, the way Cheney masterminded his way through opportunities to get what he wanted, and his unrepentant assessment of his own life. Far from being a dry recitation of fact, it’s narrated by Cheney’s replacement heart and features several filmmaking stunts such as a hilarious end-credit fakeout, quasi-subliminal visual fishing metaphors, a satirical restaurant sequence offering political options “on the menu” during post-9/11 madness, a visible narrator, faux-Shakespearian dialogue, and focus-group commentary on the film itself. It’s been fascinating to see writer-director Adam McKay transform himself from a silly comedy director to an engaged, even ferocious filmmaker, and after the exceptional The Big Short, Vice feels as if he’s applying everything he’s ever learned to take on the biggest topic of all: political power. It certainly helps that the film is an actor’s showcase at nearly every turn: Christian Bale turns in a mesmerizing impression of Cheney, while Amy Adams is almost unrecognizable as his wife. Steve Carell makes for a surprisingly likable Donald Rumsfeld (wow, I just wrote that!), with several other actor/figure pairs along the line of Tyler Perry as Colin Powell. The impact is interesting: for one thing, the film is a treasure box of delights as Bush-era political junkies will be able to recognize real-world figures before they’re introduced by name. For another, it can be surprisingly humanizing: Despite their heartless agendas, both Cheney and Rumsfeld occasionally come across as sympathetic (I either didn’t know or forgot that Cheney had humble origins, while Rumsfeld comes across as self-aware and funny). I’m not so happy with the easy portrait of Bush as an amiable dunce with daddy issues—even in a film that prizes caricatures, it feels like a cheap shot and an underestimation of his abilities. (I suspect it’ll take a while before we get an accurate Bush portrayal.)  There are several nuggets for those who have followed political history closely—including an expected poke at the whole bizarre incident when Cheney shot a guy and got the guy to apologize for it. As a non-American viewer, the reaction to Vice was amusing to see—while the film got a much-deserved Best Picture nomination, it also got scathing reviews from the right-wing press and even some centrist outlets as well—almost as if people should be scared of a movie that dares make a political point, almost as if everyone had to tiptoe around Cheney’s political clout. I’ll be blunter: Bring out more movies like Vice. Americans need them.

  • Gone Girl (2014)

    Gone Girl (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2015) While I like director David Fincher’s first movies more than his last few ones (Seven, The Game and Fight Club are classics; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo remake less so), the world at large seems to disagree, his stature having grown steadily since the beginning of his career.  With Gone Girl, though, it looks as if I’m re-joining the critical consensus: It’s a terrific thriller, unsentimental and merciless with a lot of depth along the way.  It starts innocently enough, as a man reports the suspicious disappearance of his wife.  As the plot unspools, twists appear.  Many twists, eventually leaving characters as aghast as viewers.  Saying more would be a disservice, except to praise both Ben Affleck and especially Rosamund Pike for performances that play off their existing persona (in Affleck’s case) or their lack of it (in Pike’s case).  Fincher directs the film with quasi-alien precision, which feels just about right when Gone Girl reveals itself to be an acid commentary on marriage.  A genre-aware script by Gillian Flynn (based on her own novel) makes Gone Girl a terrific thriller, but nearly everyone involved in the film bring their best work: In smaller roles, Tyler Perry delivers a memorable turn as a mesmerizing defense lawyer, while Carrie Coon transforms a small confidante role into something far more interesting.  Still, it’s director Fincher who remains the star of the show, effectively presenting his set-pieces with a lot of technical polish.  Gone Girl may not be a pleasant film, but it’s almost impossible to stop watching from its intriguing opening to its nightmarish conclusion.  It’s just not (really not) a date movie.