I’ve seen more Tyler Perry projects in my life than I think I ever truly intended to. Granted, when I started all the way back with Diary Of a Mad Black Woman, I heard that he was big in black culture, but I was far more impressed by the performance Kimberly Elise turned in than his focus stealing Madea character that became such a focus of nearly every film after that. I’ve sat through far more Perry projects than most directors I actually enjoy on a regular basis. The last film I remember Tyler Perry giving to Netflix was A Jazz Man’s Blues. This is about on that level.
With audio description by International Digital Center, written by Ryan Hooks, and narrated by (I believe) Sri Gordon, the audio description for Mea Culpa is actually quite impressive. The film itself is reminiscent of these psycho-sexual thrillers we saw with such prominence in the 90’s, like Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Sliver, Disclosure, A Perfect Murder, and even early 2000’s Unfaithful. Adrian Lyne does this genre well, but it is an odd fit for the man who made his career preaching to the choir.
Kelly Rowland stars as Mea, a promising attorney who is assigned to defend an artist (Trevonte Rhodes) of brutally killing his girlfriend. It is one of those weird films where you think you know where the movie is headed, but Perry has chosen to throw the ending so far off the rails that I’ll forgive anyone who didn’t see it coming. The ending to this is so bonkers, and rather unearned, that it is hard to figure out if you respect Perry for not going for the obvious ending, or whether or not you hate it even more for going with an utterly bizarre subplot.
The acting from the leads is fine. I’m less familiar with Rowland, but she did seem like she was doing fine with the mediocre material given to her. I’m actually a fan of Rhodes, ever since moonlight, and my hot take is that the supporting actor slot by Mahershala Ali should have been his, but he was lesser known at the time. That is a hot take indeed. Rhodes has very little expected of him, and delivers slightly more than that.
The movie is just average, which for Perry is actually not bad. Some of his movies are terrible. This is somewhat watchable, if not for the batshit ending. But, the audio description takes the cake here. There were so many little moments I loved. The description of the painting above the piano, was super solid. The sex scene where we get notified of gold paint dripping onto Kelly Rowland’s nipple is so specific, and because of that it creates the image. Often, sex scenes are reduced to thrusting, and it takes so much out of the moment. It also makes every scene feel the same.
I did enjoy this description enough that I made enough notice on a list I keep for end of year awards from myself. Meaning, Tyler Perry might win something from me. I doubt it wins the top Audio Description prize, but it could totally be on the list. Lots of credit to Ryan Hooks for the terrific description script.
If you are a Tyler Perry fan, I have no idea what you like. So, just go with it. If you aren’t, this is the least Tyler Perry thing he’s probably ever done.
Final Grade: C
