In his writing and directing career, Tyler Perry has specialized in two somewhat related genres of films. First, there are the Madea movies, featuring Perry in drag as a very feisty older woman who gives everyone in sight her unabashed opinion (and sometimes a good kick in the butt as well). And second, there are his soap operatic melodramas, which often feature the same type of over-the-top acting as Madea puts on display (but without the intentional laughs). His latest, entitled in full Tyler Perry’s Acrimony, istarts out as exactly that sort of melodrama and then somehow morphs into a woman-scorned revenge thriller akin to Fatal Attraction, with Taraji P. Henson filling in for Glenn Close. Henson is quite good as the woman scorned, but the movie bounces around far too much to be effective or credible.
Henson plays Melinda, the long-suffering wife of would-be inventor Robert (Lyriq Bent). The two met in college (with the younger roles being played by Ajiona Alexus and Antonio Madison respectively), where Robert impressed Melinda with his charm and drive and got her to agree to marry him, against the wishes of her disapproving family. Their suspicions of Robert proved well founded when she caught him cheating on her, and an enraged Melinda smashed her car into Robert’s trailer, injuring herself in the process so that she could no longer have children. An apologetic Robert begged for a second chance, and Melinda took him back and wound up supporting him, working multiple jobs while Robert worked on his revolutionary would-be invention, a self-charging battery.
Fast forward 18 years (accomplished by one skillful dissolve of the younger actors staring at themselves in the bathroom mirror morphing into the older ones in the same pose) and Robert still has gotten nowhere with his battery, in the process racking up thousands of dollars in bills that ate up Melinda’s inheritance from her mother. In the meantime, Robert thinks that he has perfected his battery, only to find major companies reluctant to talk to him. The bank threatens to foreclose on the house that Melinda mortgaged to support Robert, and her relatives agree to front the money (putting their trucking business at risk in the process) if Robert gives up on his battery idea and goes to work with them as a driver.
Soon, however, Robert is back to his old ways, blowing off an important delivery when Diana, his girlfriend from his college days (now played by Crystle Stewart), gets him a meeting with the president of the energy company where she works. The company offers Robert $800,000 for his idea, but Robert turns it down, sure that it will make more money later. This proves to be the last straw for Melinda, who goes ballistic (see scene below) and throws Robert out. A distraught Robert soon hits rock bottom, washing dishes for a living and sleeping in a homeless shelter.
The last laugh proves to be on Melinda, however, as Robert is able to make his idea work and he winds up partnering with the company that made him the earlier offer. Robert becomes a multi-millionaire in the process and rejects Melinda’s attempt to reconcile, instead marrying Diana, who earlier helped pull him out of the gutter. Robert’s success and upcoming marriage cause Melinda to go full-on Glenn Close, leading to a big final confrontation with Robert and Diana.
There are two very distinct subplots at work in Acrimony, which are so distinct from each other that it almost seems as if Tyler Perry made two different films with the same cast and arranged for them to play back to back. First, Melinda is the wronged woman, married to a worthless dreamer of a womanizer who bleeds her dry. Then, when she finally makes the decision to give Robert the boot and begins to get her life back together, she discovers that Robert, against all semblance of real world logic, has somehow become successful and, when he rejects her in favor of Diana, Melinda has a complete psychotic break, turning from long suffering wife to vengeful harpy.
It would require a very talented screenwriter to weave the two disparate storylines in Acrimony into one cohesive movie, but Perry doesn’t even come close. He resorts to the gimmick of having Melinda provide voiceover narration, supposedly representing her talks with the court-appointed therapist whom she is required to see for counseling after Robert gets a restraining order against her. During these sessions, Melinda carries on over and over about what a rat Robert is (and men in general are) and how he took advantage of her. I get the feeling that Perry might have been going for a third act twist here, by having Robert revealed as completely innocent (at one point he tells her he had never cheated on her since the escapade in the trailer) and merely the target of Melinda’s unhinged fantasies. And the fact that Lyriq Bent isn’t exactly the sort of dashing ladies man actor one would expect in such a role enhances the possibility that such a reveal was Perry’s intent. But, ladies man or no, it’s clear that he drained the family finances working on his scheme and nearly bankrupted his wife to boot. Add to this the completely incredible idea that an idea on which Robert essentially tinkered for 20 years would still represent such a cutting-edge technology as to be worth tens of millions, and the film’s plot becomes a total mess.
It's only when the revenge storyline of Acrimony kicks into gear that the film really becomes interesting. Simply put, Glenn Close doesn’t have anything on Taraji P. Henson when it comes to throwing a fit and acting deranged, and Perry actually does a pretty good job of building audience expectations for over an hour of Robert screwing up over and over while Melinda takes it in silence. Then, finally when Henson has the opportunity to throw a fit, she does so in grand style. This is by no means great film making, but it’s several minutes of great trash film making.
Unfortunately, while 20 minutes of delicious over-the-top scenery chewing by Taraji P. Henson makes enduring the long opening slag of Acrimony worthwhile, that relatively meager payoff probably won’t please anyone. Fans of Perry’s Madea films or of Henson’s character on TV’s Empire will find the eventual fireworks too paltry and too long in coming, while anyone who might actually have expected to see a quality drama will consider those aforementioned fireworks to be the proverbial last straw. Personally, I’m always amenable to watching entertaining trash cinema, so I probably liked Acrimony better than most will. Still, it’s a movie likely to leave a bitter taste in anyone’s mouth.
