I was appalled when I went to go see Tyler Perry's latest movie Good Deeds... appalled at my town. I was the only one in the theater! And this is the second time in a row that that's happened when I went to see a Tyler Perry flick on the big screen.
Seriously, folks, I listen to all y'all complain about how Hollywood is only selling trash and cheap plots and yet you still funnel huge amounts of money into the special effects drivel. But when an uplifting, beautiful, romantic, and an all-around civilized flick comes around, it gets ignored. You deserve the crappy, cheesy, and nasty flicks that y'all complain about!
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Good Deeds is one of Tyler Perry's best movies, and considering the high bar he set for himself over the years, this is saying a lot.
It's not one of his Madea flicks. In fact, it's not really all that funny. It's just darn good drama.
Tyler Perry plays Wesley Deeds, a successful CEO of his father's company who is miserable in his superficially perfect life. I mean, he has it all: money, a gorgeous fiancee, a reputation to be admired, and to top it off, he is a genuinely good man. You get to see him be good from the start of the film. His one flaw is that he lets his family walk over him, from his controlling mother to his angsty brother, even the reputation of his deceased father follows him around.
Thandie Newton is Lindsey Wakefield, a single mom who is hitting rock-bottom the way Will Smith did in Pursuit of Happyness. She's scared to death from the first five seconds that she's on screen and because she's so proud, she lies and lashes out at everybody who does and doesn't deserve it. I found myself admiring and pitying her at the same time.
Wesley and Lindsey cross paths several times in some pretty stressful circumstances before becoming friends, and it's a very natural friendship that follows. The romance was believeable and the family drama good, but what made this movie work for me was watching these two strangers help each other out of their own private hells and finding that they can be happy despite the whole world bearing down on them.
It's the kind of story I want to do someday... when I finally grow out of the swords and explosions I love playing around with so much.
Although speaking of genre fiction, I'm going to put in a plug for a friend who was in the same writing group as me, April Steed. She is one of the busiest writers I know of and is proving it with her website, http://www.aprilsteed.com/. She is also a much braver soul than I am. On her website, she is offering free short stories that get rotated around, plus she is doing a serial novel entitled Spider Harp, also for free reading. It seems to be strictly for the fantasy audience. Check her out; I'm sure she won't mind more people seeing her work.
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