WHY DID I GET MARRIED TOO? 2/4
Lionsgate, Rated PG-13
The good news is Tyler Perry doesn’t send us off to church this time around, but the release of Why Did I Get Married Too? on Good Friday is likely no coincidence. Perry does return us to the scene of the conjugal crimes in the sequel to 2007’s first look into the married life, as eight crabby college friends married to one another fume and bicker during this annual one-week Bahamas couples therapy and reunion vacation.
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Here, infidelity and spousal distrust run rampant in varying forms. There’s Janet Jackson, as Patricia, the most enigmatic and stressed out of all, who gets her message across by beating up her house and its pricey contents with a golf club—wonder where she got that idea.
Sharon Leal and Tyler Perry in Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too.
There’s temper tantrum-prone loudmouth Angela (Tasha Smith), who is more into suspiciously stalking her exasperated jock spouse Marcus (Michael Jai White) and barging into the live broadcast of his television show to air her grievances. There’s Sheila (Jill Scott), who, is dealing with the anxieties of a newborn and a suddenly unemployed husband, along with the shocking surprise appearance at the island hotel of her still bitterly resented ex Mike (Richard T. Jones).
And compounding suspicions is that most of these on-the-rocks marriages seem to designate the female partners as the disruptive characters, while Perry reserves for himself the role of the only accusatory mate whose hunches are rewarded with some self-righteous solid leads. What can I say Tyler, you’re just more appealing in a dress.
And though Perry has made claims that his preachy approach to filmmaking is to both critique and support remedies to address the fractured state of marriage in the black community, the question more to the point is: Which black community? The insular, cloistered world of these middle class professionals in Why Did I Get Married Too? is hardly representative of the majority of African Americans currently suffering under the plight of ghetto poverty, racism, police brutality, racial profiling, the largest percentage of the U.S. prison population and unemployment that has reached epidemic levels. At the same time, broken families, the key concern of Perry here, are no greater a problem for the black middle class portrayed exclusively in this film than their white counterparts.
And while African Americans shouldn’t be held any more accountable than white directors for producing movies focusing on the shallow and petty concerns of ordinary lives, Perry happens to be a filmmaker professing loftier, socially and morally driven goals in that arena. So then why present an economically and racially segregated narrative in no way grounded in the diversity and hardcore issues—in particular, racism—that constitute reality? Instead, Perry, a not-exactly-separation-of-church-and-state kinda guy, even if delivering an on-the-surface secular slice of life cinema, proposes a questionable matrimony of religious values and individual self-blame.
Finding this occasionally over-the-top nasty domestic strife in Why Did I Get Married Too? entertaining depends on whether or not you’re someone who has a tendency to put your ears closer to the wall when married neighbors squabble loudly, or who would rather cover them up for the annoying duration. In any case, Perry has yet to distinguish between amusing or admonishing his audiences.
