Faith, Hope, and Love

Those who know me may think Tyler Perry is a little out of style for me, but I assure you I have sincerely enjoyed his work. I first heard of Tyler Perry while talking to my girlfriend. She mentioned he was a writer, which first caught my attention, and then she said he was a Christian. At this point I was all ears. I don’t know if there are a lot of Christian writers in Hollywood but I do know there aren’t a lot that take their faith and place it so directly into their work. When she mentioned that he wrote Diary of a Mad Black Woman I was pleased to remember that I had already seen this movie and really liked it. It hadn’t occurred to me until that point that that movie has a very strong Christian idea within it. It wasn’t until a few years later that I saw another Tyler Perry production: Why Did I Get Married. Once again I wasn’t aware that it was written by Tyler Perry. At least this time I found out while sitting in the movie theatre.

Anytime you go to see a Tyler Perry movie you can be sure it will be multi-dimensional. You will laugh, you will be angry, you will cry (or at least be sad), and you will be inspired. He is a master at bringing these elements together to create something that is more than just entertainment. Your emotions will be jerked around, but I believe sometimes our emotions have to go through a beating before we can finally learn something. Tyler Perry movies will do just that to your emotions and try to teach a message.

In Diary of a Mad Black Woman we have a story of a neglected wife who is in love with her very rich, but abusive, selfish, and adulterous husband. Her husband finally leaves her with no money and her only choice is to go back to her family. While there she meets a man that is charismatic and persistent. She is very hesitant at first because her past tells her to be careful, but she eventually lets her guard down and falls in love. At this point you think that everything is going to be fine with her and her new love—not unlike other movie. But this movie takes an unexpected and quite frustrating turn. The husband ends up having an accident, becoming paralyzed from the neck down, and his mistress leaves him. This once neglected wife amazingly returns to her abusive and now helpless husband and cares for him when no one else would. This movie shows a powerful message of unconditional love and forgiveness that this world does not know.

This is characteristic of Tyler Perry movies. I believe his goal is to project on the movie screen love that people do no understand, the humbling acts of love that make people, and especially Americans, scratch there head in disbelief and sometimes anger. Sometimes it is hard to believe that that kind of love exists but maybe seeing it on screen will open up a window for opportunity.

Diary of a Mad Black Woman stars Kimberly Elise, Steve Harris, Shemar Moore, Tamara Taylor, Lisa Marcos, Tiffany Evans, Cicely Tyson, and Tyler Perry. While this isn’t exactly an all-star cast the acting is good enough to draw the viewer in and inspire attachment to the characters.

He creates this perplexing kind of love once again in Why Did I Get Married. This movie is about a group of married couples that take a vacation together into the mountains. The movie starts by first introducing each couple in an attempt to show the quality of the relationship. Out of the four couples only one is partially stable and it even breaks down because of a child’s death that took place in the past. One couple is plagued by a workaholic wife. One couple a adulterous husband and an alcoholic wife, and once again another couple with an adulterous husband but with the most redeeming character in the movie as his wife. This wife shows the capability to push through a marriage and always have hope through faith and prayer to God. Eventually her jerk husband gets what he deserves after a disastrous dinner, which is the cause of everyone leaving the next morning. The faithful wife stays behind and is swept away by a local park ranger who is caring and the Godly leader she has been looking for. Tyler Perry once again creates a multidimensional film that will make you laugh, cry, be inspired.

This move shows the importance of remaining persistent and strong even in the toughest times because God will bless those who are faithful. It also gives hope to marriages that feel as if they are about to crumble. All but one of the couples works through their problems and start a happy and loving marriage. The movie doesn’t imply that the solutions will be automatic or they will come with ease, but it does inspire that through love any problem can be solved. With the divorce rate as it is these days this is a great movie for any struggling couple.

The movie has a few familiar faces but several new ones including Tyler Perry, Janet Jackson, Sharon Leal, Malik Yoba, Jill Scott, Richard T. Jones, Tasha Smith, Micheal Jai White, Denise Boutte Lamman Rucker, Keesha Sharp, and Kaira Whitehead. Once again not an all-star cast but I believe Perry does this for a reason. With famous actors we often have a hard time seeing them as someone different than their past characters. For example, I have the hardest time seeing Bruce Willis as a tough but yet quite and prideful cop/mafia member. Perry’s movies rely on the viewer’s ability to relate to the characters. The stories are heart-wrenching but if a character doesn’t seem real to the viewer then the story has no effect. With unfamiliar actors it is easier for a viewer to relate and find that connection because there are no prior attachments to alternate facades. It is like meeting the characters for the first time and learning about their strengths and weakness and struggles.

I think it is a shame that so many people look at an ad for his movies and immediately believe that the movie isn’t for them. There isn’t a lot of advertisement for his movies, but if people would only give them a chance they would see there is more redeeming qualities in them than most movies you will ever see. Yes, they are very different than most movies but more times than not you will come to enjoy something different if you only give it a try.

I encourage people to go and rent this movie. It will open your eyes to a new kind of theme, comedy, and acting. The movie will span a human’s best and worst intentions and abilities and somehow still leave you without any maliciousness toward any character. You will go through a number of emotional states and end inspired. You will see a rarely seen side of Christianity and most importantly see faith and love in action. If you are looking for something new, funny, and life changing check out any Tyler Perry movie or play.

The Italian Stallion

While looking for a movie that was made before my time I came to find out that I am quite deprived of a movie library of the 70’s and back. I did come across one of my favorites though-Rocky. Rocky is one of those movies that almost everyone at least has heard about. It isn’t just a fantastic and amazing story but it is inspiring. Rocky brought home many Oscars for best director, best film editing, best picture and was nominated for Oscars for best actor in a leading role, best actor in a supporting role (Burgess Meredith), best actor in a supporting role (Burt Young), best actress in a leading role, best music, best sound, best writing. The awards can speak for themselves.

With the champion Apollo Creed on top of the boxing world he gives an amateur the chance for the title and this is where Rocky comes in. Apollo sees him in a boxing club and rights him off saying he would knock him out by the third round. Apollo then begins to advertise the fight rather than train for it dressing as George Washington and Uncle Sam. Rocky Balboa is an inner city man who is slightly stubborn but innocent. He begins training under Mickey who tells him to “eat lightning and poop thunder”–just like a boxing coach right. While Rocky’s is training he meets a shy and reserved girl, Adrian, who he falls in love with. Rocky later goes 15 rounds with Apollo Creed and loses by a controversial split decision.

Rocky has an interesting history of love and hate. Rocky like many boxing movies does a horrible job of filming an authentic fight. For boxing fans this is important. Some have said about the fight between Rocky and Apollo that Apollo made mistakes a real boxing champion would never make and a referee would never allow such a bloodbath.

For those who are less familiar with boxing the movie is a masterpiece. The scenes of Rocky going through boxing drills, punching raw meat, and running up a buildings steps while “Eye of the Tiger” plays in the background is inspiring and compels me to become a gym rat that could also fight Apollo Creed. The subplot of Rocky and Adrian’s blooming relationship draws that connection between the viewer and the actors. With love on the line now the fight suddenly becomes more than just victory but survival. Rocky has something to live for. The producers take advantage of this in the Rocky IV when we finally get a connection with Apollo and then he is killed by the Russian heavyweight. Without this subplot between Rocky and Adrian I hardly think that the movie would have carried any weight. In a movie we need something more than sheer pride and a need to feel like the best in a character to really root him on.

We also root for Balboa because the odds are so much against him. Rocky comes from the slums and Apollo Creed is an established champion boxer. All logic tells us Apollo will crush him. Americans like the underdog story, probably because we too were underdogs at one time at the dawn of our birth. There is something more than just a good boxing story with a love story accompanying it. This movie tells us that hope is always there. This is an idea we as Americans have been taught but sometimes forget. Rocky digs deep into our inner being and pulls that hope back to the surface. The movie tells us we can be triumphant and get the girl too.

So obviously there is something that can be said for a good plot but is authenticity also important. Many said that Ali starring Will Smith was a wonderful movie because the boxing scenes were so real and right to a tee. The same has been said about Disney’s Miracle. I do wish Rocky was more believable in the fight scenes but if the script would have held strictly to what should and should not happen it might have become more of a movie for the boxing community and less for the mass public. The mass public wants drama and big hits and lots of blood after all. While I don’t believe that the movie actually is carried by the boxing scene it is important that it ends in a bang. Obviously the big fight is what everyone is waiting for and keeps people watching but everything before the movie is needed before we can get to the fight scene. In the same way the fight scene needs to be fantastic to validate the whole story before it. So whether authenticity is important or not is up to the individual and depends on the goal of the movie. If the movie is striving to reach a mass public and more emphasis is on the characters then authenticity isn’t as important, but if the movie focuses on displaying the sport of boxing such as in Ali, which is trying to show boxing as a part of history¸ then the authenticity is definitely important.

They’ll never take our freedom!

I was just looking through a library the last weeks and I noticed many books on American History.  As I was going through all of the biographies of famous Americans–Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Thomas Paine–I was reminded of how they had to band together, trust one another to begin to fight.  It is a movie very similar to our countries history that does the same thing to me–Braveheart.  I know.  This is every man’s favorite movie, but I can’t deny it.

Braveheart exemplifies what I believe every man wishes he could do.  Not necessarily be William Wallace (played by Mel Gibson) but fight for family, home, and freedom.  It is a stereotype the men to not like romance stories but this movie is just that.  There is romance all through it.  Who do you think those men were fighting for?  Not to mention that William Wallace falls in love with two different women in the movie.  So how does this movie, with two different love affairs, draw the attention of so many men.

Well first of all it is a movie about overcome odds.  In the movie the Scottish have been oppressed by the English for decades and finally when Scotland gets a leader that can unify the country they try to remove the English rule.  The English at this time were one of the strongest nations in the world.  there is something exciting about when they finish the scene on the plains, when only Scottish men are standing, blood running down their face, dripping from their hair, still grasping a stern, fierce face, dead Englishmen at their feet.  It is almost synonymous to a game winning homerun in the world series by an underdog.  It’s just not suppose to happen.

The relationships of the characters, between husband and wife, father and son or daughter, grandfather and family, have the potential to draw the viewer in.  There aren’t even that many scenes showing a father leaving a family, but yet we know why they are there.  The money takes advantage of this potential by its great acting.  We see several sides of some of the main characters–bravery, sorrow, weakness.  I always love it when the characters are believable.  In many movies it’s almost hard to connect with a character because they seem so fake or not human at all in their actions or speech.  This is why I love authenticity in movies.  For example, many people do not like when a movie is in another language.  For me, I want the language to be accurate with the character.  In Apocalypto I was very pleased that the whole movie was in the Mayan language.  It seemed more real to me.  Because Braveheart did a good job in depicting the Scottish culture it captured my emotions for the characters and in effect made me care about their cause.