When you see a title like Divorce in the Black appear underneath a Tyler Perry byline, you assume this is more not-so-clever wordplay that clumsily states the obvious: a woman takes her no-good ex to the cleaners before riding off into the sunset. But this new Amazon Prime feature doesn’t just fail to live up to that billing. It’s easily his worst film to date.
Perry – who, as ever, hordes credit for producing, writing and directing this 132-minute film – sets up the disappointment early, opening at the funeral of a young man for a heavy dose of exposition. Who the man is doesn’t matter as much as him dying while attempting to rob a parishioner who just so happened to be packing heat. In between the deceased being consigned to an afterlife in hell and his ne’er-do-well family dragging the body from the casket and out of the church for a non-judgmental burial, we meet Ava (Think Like a Man’s Meagan Good) and Dallas (American Sniper’s Cory Hardrict), the doomed couple brought that much closer to Splitsville after this scene gets tongues wagging in the tiny rural Georgia town they left long ago for a new start in Atlanta, away from this Hatfields v McCoys-lite drama.
The dead guy? He was older brother to Dallas, the latest admittedly “ain’t shit” dude to draw Tyler Perry’s raggedy hair treatment. Dallas comes from nothing, he’s earned nothing. The only possession that he’d seem genuinely worried about losing is an old pickup truck he restored with his dead brother in high school. But that doesn’t move either. He does not have anything that Ava would want, much less a pile worth warring over in court, other than a bad boy streak that appeals to all preachers’ kids.
Ava works at a bank, hence the “in the black” connection. That’s it. She owns a big house in the city, comfortably adheres to local fashion codes, drives the “nice” Kia. All she wants is a marriage in which she feels loved and safe, and her religious principles simply won’t allow her to give up on her loser husband. When the subject of divorce finally arrives, it’s Dallas, drunk on brown liquor, who makes the full-throated declaration in a crowded restaurant as they’re on a double date. (In fact, he broaches the subject by growling: “Black women ain’t shit.”) Once Dallas is shunted down this Tyler Perry villain’s arc, Ava is free to reprise her love connection with Benji (Young Rock’s Joseph Lee Anderson), the strapping hayseed that she should’ve married all along.
At this point in Perry’s career, measuring him against peers who actually put time and care into their films is a fool’s errand when you can judge him based on previous work. In February he released a legal thriller called Mea Culpa on Netflix that, while universally panned, nonetheless featured some moments that resonated with viewers – the sex scene on canvas, say. Divorce, though, was more paint-by-numbers schlock from a guy who may well have been rushing to get this project finished in between his umpteen other film and TV projects. Why give it his full attention when viewers won’t be giving theirs, amirite?
No one’s going to wonder how it is that Ava, the faithful wife who worshipped her husband as God, turned into the ultimate fighter after Dallas split with her at that embarrassing dinner double date. No one’s going to care that Good is coasting on her ceramic beauty again. They’ll be too preoccupied folding laundry or cooking dinner or doing God knows on their phone. That’s just as well. Following the action would only be a waste of time and patience.
Even a late scene where Dallas breaks back into the house and finds Benji in his bed fails to deliver the makes-no-sense twist that has become Perry’s trademark. It just leads to Ava telling Dallas he “woke up the bitch in me” – one too many flat lines for a writer who at the very least can pack a punchline. That kicks off a fight that ends with her dragging Dallas down a flight of steps into the street. It’s as if Perry needed to do some dragging of his own, and this film certainly drags, before viewers came for him yet again.
