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I enjoyed "Diary of A Mad Black Woman" despite myself. Madea is a howl!
However, I was offended by the rather obvious Christian message and the sort of "come to Jesus" moment at the climax of the movie. Given how the message of Jesus is delivered in such heavy-handed, out of context fashion these days, the last thing I need is a church service pretending to be a movie. So that part was a bit much. The movie was slapstick but touching, and there were some very capable actors on hand like Steve Harris, Shemar Moore, and Kimberly Elise. To say the acting was terrible is to devalue the very good work these actors have done in other films and television. I think you could still get the core message across without all the church scenes and all the hollering, but that's just me. Having said that, this is a pretty fair representation of a slice of African American culture and it deserves more attention than it's gotten. Black people have a deep and profound sense of the spiritual, and it takes many forms, not just the Christian variety. My hope is that Tyler Perry will continue to grow as an artist and make plays and films that will show more of the human complexity of black people. As people begin to more fully understand our humanity, racism and the whole horrific legacy of slavery will become a distant memory as it should.
