This is the review of a mad white movie critic. I tell you that I am mad because this film that I have seen here could have been so good, but it stepped a few wrong steps on the dance floor, and if you make the wrong steps on the dance floor you end up getting your feet crushed. Its not important that I am white but I tell you because many a lover of this film and of Tyler Perry’s plays argue that white people just don’t have the capacity to understand, which is false and why I have also stated my occupation as movie critic. Even several black critics have given Diary of a Mad Black Woman negative reviews.

I say my occupation because as people, we know what we like simply because we like it, we don’t need a reason. But as a movie critic the lines between personal and professional opinion begin to blur. I have always told people that the movies I love are great ones; race, gender, subject matter, or genres have no bearing on the decision. If I didn’t like Diary of a Mad Black Woman because I am white that would mean that I would also have great dislike for films such as Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X or Boyz N The Hood, three great films made by black people, about black people. In fact I would not be hesitant even to say that Spike Lee is one of the great directors of our time.

Of course my argument this far may be a little in vein, Oprah loved Diary of a Mad Black Woman, but I have come to the conclusion that a black filmmaker could make the worst film ever known to Hollywood and Oprah would still love it. Can anyone say White Chicks?

So what exactly is this film about? It’s about Helen (Kimberly Elise) who is stuck in a marriage with a man who gives her every reason to leave him, but who she is so dependent on that she keeps giving herself reasons not to. He is cruel to her, doesn’t appreciate her, has children with another woman who he cheats on her with, and hits her from time to time. On the night of their anniversary he shows up with his mistress and kicks Helen out of the house.

I believe that there are two kinds of people in the world of film. There are universal people, those who exist as people and are simply that, they are not bound by race or gender or class, we simply accept them as a fellow person and move on. Helen is a universal person, so is Orlando the man who she first despises and then grows very passionately about. He’s the kind of guy who says things like “don’t make me pay for his mistakes,” referring to Helen’s ex-husband. These are the people who Oprah was talking about when she said Diary of a Mad Black Woman is a film that shows black people doing real things.

Orlando, Helen, and a select few others are all universal people. But then we get caricatures; people who are comprised of typical racial stereotypes. Madea, Helen’s grandmother, is a caricature who is so over-the-top that she brings nearly every scene she appears in to a complete halt. Tyler Perry, who wrote, produced and started in two other roles besides Madea, plays the character in drag. Madea is a creation that Perry made infamous in his stage plays and I suppose he thought it was time to bring her to the big screen. But why this film? A film that otherwise cares about the people who are in it, knows their strengths and weaknesses and takes pleasure in watching life as it is being lived?

Look at the relationship between Helen and Orlando, he is one of the nicest male characters to be put on screen in a long time, and the way he is played by Shemar Moore proves to us that there are still good people in the world who can provide a wounded woman with a romance that is based around intimacy instead of sex. And what about that moment in the nursing home between Helen and her mother? What power and truth that scene finds in just by knowing the people who are in it.

But then there is Medea, who I’m sure is kind of like someone’s relative, but probably not this overblown. I’m hard pressed to imagine a elderly black woman who carries a gun in her purse and won’t go to church until they make a smoking section, who breaks into a mans house and takes a chainsaw to his furniture. Of course she’s not the films only flaw, there is also a revelation late in the plot involving Helen’s husband that adds conflict when all that is needed is emotion, but that is forgivable as we can see real people discovering life and changing because of it. A character like Madea is just not that easily forgiven.