For Colored Girls 2010

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: The rich language of the ruminations are utterly disconnected from Perry's dialogue. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Ham-handed, obvious, overblown and pretentious, For Colored Girls is a plain disaster. Read more

James Rocchi, MSN Movies: I used to think there was nothing worse in modern moviemaking than Perry's unfunny, incompetent stooping for profit. It turns out that when he boldly and blatantly panders for prestige, he reaches even newer lows. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: [Tyler Perry] sings the song the way he likes it - with force, feeling and tremendous sincerity. Read more

Lisa Rosman, Time Out: Herein lies an invitation for us all to move beyond victimhood ... and, in some cases, simply to get over ourselves. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: For Colored Girls is so shamelessly terrible it would make a great midnight hoot-fest, if you had the stomach to laugh at Shange or some of the best (and most underused) actresses of their generation... Read more

Misha Berson, Seattle Times: Who could imagine, 35 years on, For Colored Girls would become a star-studded mess of a movie directed by a black, male Hollywood mogul? Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: There's no right way to do an adaptation, particularly a difficult-to-adapt work like this, but there are plenty of wrong ways, and Perry's film offers a casebook of things-not-to-do. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: The film comes off as one long litany of lament and tragedy that never fits together. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: The audience I saw it with didn't seem to know whether to clap when it was over or start taking Lipitor. Read more

Amy Nicholson, Boxoffice Magazine: While these two hours of hopelessness seem to argue that being an inner city black woman is the unluckiest roll of the dice, these ladies - even at their weakest - carry themselves with the confidence of winners, and we cling to their strength. Read more

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader: Perry benefits from the fire, heft, velocity, and lyricism of the language, but he also updates the material and makes it work onscreen, eliciting powerhouse performances from an ensemble of actresses. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The appeal of the original went far beyond the specifics of being black or female, in the '70s or any time. The adaptation's limitations make the play seem quaint, out of date. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Perry has assembled a formidable ensemble, including Loretta Devine, Kimberly Elise, Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose, Tessa Thompson, Kerry Washington, Whoopi Goldberg, Janet Jackson, Phylicia Rashad and, in the most searing cameo, Macy Gray. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Director Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls is a bold example of an artist's reach exceeding his grasp. And it's hard not to applaud his determination and grade for ambition. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Perry has taken Shange's feminist word-and-movement portraits of disenfranchised African-American women and turned those howls into...a maddeningly choppy mess of a Tyler Perry movie. Read more

Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter: Tyler Perry utterly butchers Ntozake Shange's theatrical tone poem to black female identity. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: It is a film destined to polarize. Many will hate it. Hopefully more will love it, or at least allow room for it, for its raw brutality, its extremes, its difficult truths. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Perry has built a lucrative and beloved niche from films aimed specifically at black women, but none of those pictures bore the painfully theatrical artifice of For Colored Girls... Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Perry gets points for persistence, yes, and for ambition. But that's not enuf. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Fans of the original may be dismayed by his often-awkward adaptation, which turns too many of Shange's survivors into victims. But it's equally likely that his blunt, emotional approach -- using her words to create his own melodrama -- will connect ... Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: Shange's words retain their power despite the melodramatic incidents Perry has woven to fill in the spaces between poems, his flat, TV-style direction and the highly variable performances of an all-star cast. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Shange gives us archetypes; Perry trades in stereotypes. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Perry tries to be faithful to the play and also to his own boldly and simply told stories, and the two styles don't fit together. Read more

Matt Zoller Seitz, Salon.com: Perry never solves the stage-to-screen translation problem. But the path he has chosen is as intriguing as it is irksome, and it works better than you might expect. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Shows a mastery of tone, a capacity to elicit strong performances and also to bring out different colors within those performances so that, when it all comes together, it's not the same note sounding over and over. This is smart, lovely work. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: The film is a mawkish mess, only occasionally alleviated by the performances or Shange's poetry. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: The writer/director behind the exceedingly broad comedy of the Madea franchise approaches the hit 1970s Ntozake Shange play with a pragmatism that succeeds in form but not in function. Read more

Mary F. Pols, TIME Magazine: For Colored Girls feels like the cinematic equivalent to putting a garish reproduction of the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of your McMansion and calling it art.
 Read more

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Monologues and melodrama rarely work in contemporary movies exploring social ills. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: Though the text of the playwright's most affecting poems is virtually intact, Perry has unmistakably wrestled Girls into the same soap-opera mold of his earlier pics. Read more

Melissa Anderson, Village Voice: Though striving for artistic legitimacy in bringing Shange's incomparable play to the screen, Perry indulges his worst instincts for melodrama in For Colored Girls, shoehorning her text into his own tawdry narrative. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: "For Colored Girls" may, in fact, be Perry's best film (not saying a lot, I know). It's certainly his first bid, as a director, for art-house respectability. Read more