For Colored Girls

Somebody almost ran off with all of Ntozake Shange's stuff, to paraphrase one of the most vibrant poems in Shange's "For Colored Girls."

It's a sad situation, because that somebody is Tyler Perry, whose broadly popular tastes and talents far exceed the Madea franchise for which he became famous. He loved Shange's powerhouse of a play (full title: "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf") enough to champion and then personally implement its unlikely transfer from the stage to the multiplex.

So what happens when a stage phenomenon's ardent admirer becomes its undoing on screen?

You'd have to go back to Sidney Lumet's version of "Equus" a generation ago to find such highly stylized material brought to the screen with a heavier hand. It is one thing to hear, unforgettably in Shange's original, a woman describing her boyfriend dangling their two young children out an apartment window, and then letting go. It is quite another to see this visualized, with the music and the melodrama pumping up the emotion to the point of grim parody.

First staged in 1974 in a Berkeley, Calif. coffeehouse, Shange's stage piece consists of 20 narrative poems performed by seven actresses. Understandably, Perry felt a film version needed more narrative machinery. Several of the women now live in the same Harlem apartment building, managed by a newly created earth-mother character played (very well) by Phylicia Rashad. Bloodline and neighborhood connections are made among various people, and Perry has invented several new characters, female and male, to flesh out the ensemble and give it a "Crash"-like vibe of colliding destinies.

Here and there, the mixture of poetry and realism catches hold. A character named Juanita played by Loretta Devine runs a community center health clinic and writing workshop; Devine gets the "stuff" poem, a wonderful, joyous creation that in part goes like this: "somebody almost run off wit alla my stuff / & i waz standin there / lookin at myself / the whole time ... / waz a man faster'n my innocence."

To this richness, Perry adds social-service axioms from a different planet entirely ("HIV is not the death sentence it used to be," someone says at one point). Janet Jackson recycles the icy career monster she played in Perry's "Why Did I Get Married" pictures, and her character's dilemma (mysterious Mr. Perfect husband might be stepping out) and personality traits simply don't jibe with Shange's creations. By the time Thandie Newton (as a trollop in need of enlightenment) and Whoopi Goldberg (as her unfeeling mother) get into a literal smack down near the end, you're reminded that even good performers need modulation, and that maximum volume does not always equal maximum effectiveness. The key issues of the original -- abortion, date rape, infidelity, a yearning for a fuller self -- are all here, but the actresses treat each moment like a strenuous Oscar bid.

The appeal of the original went far beyond the specifics of being black or female, in the '70s or any time. The adaptation's limitations make the play seem quaint, out of date. "Give me something with some sort of style!" Jackson's character seethes at one point, dismissing some magazine page proofs like an African-American Miranda Priestley. Perry should've listened to her. Aiming for a piece with the raw impact of "Precious," on which he served as executive producer, he ends up with 134 minutes of misjudged intensity.

 

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"For Colored Girls" Movie Trailer

 

 

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MPAA rating: R (for some disturbing violence including a rape, sexual content and language).

Running time: 2:14.

Cast: Janet Jackson (Jo/Red); Thandie Newton (Tangie/Orange); Whoopi Goldberg (Alice/White); Phylicia Rashad (Gilda); Anika Noni Rose (Yasmine/Yellow); Loretta Devine (Juanita/Green); Kimberly Elise (Crystal/Brown); Kerry Washington (Kelly/Blue).

Credits: Written and directed by Tyler Perry; based on the play "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf" by Ntozake Shange; produced by Tyler Perry, Paul Hall and Roger M. Bobb. A Lionsgate release.