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Nobody's Fool
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Being a citizen not of the USA, I find the films of
Tyler Perry an extremely odd and rather exotic phenomenon. I stumbled upon his
work at the belated point of his bloated melodrama Acrimony (2018) which, in its naïveté of narrative craft, ended up generating a
maddening but fascinating sheen of surrealism. I was intrigued (perhaps
masochistically) to check if that description fits his work in general.
It does.
Perry churned out Nobody’s
Fool (not be confused with Evelyn Purcell's 1986 film of that title scripted by Beth Henley), perhaps to quickly
recover his more usual comedic métier,
in the same acrimonious year of 2018. Its nominal subject
is the pop media craze of “catfishing” – even to the extent of working in small
roles for Nev Schulman and Max Joseph, hosts of the TV series (itself the
spin-off of a documentary movie) Catfish.
Danica (Tika Sumpter) has fallen for a guy she has never seen in the flesh,
only interacted with online. Charlie, it seems, ticks every box on her insanely
romantic “wish list”.
Danica is triangulated between this mysterious
dreamboat named Charlie, and hunky, honest Frank (Omari Hardwick) – who is,
however, someone with a less than salubrious past, and thus not wish-list
material. Danica’s best friend, Kalli (Amber Riley), and her agreeably stoned
mother Lola (Whoopi Goldberg), buzz about for the sake of gossip, advice and
banter.
Perry’s black characters live in a world of affluence
(marketing firms, coffee shops, the legal profession, corporate consulting) –
that is, unless they are just sprung from prison, or living in a caravan on
medical benefits. Into this latter, ex-criminal category falls Danica’s sister,
Tanya (Tiffany Haddish). The film is, essentially, built as a vehicle for Haddish’s
talents as a performer: she’s screwball, foul-mouthed, sex-starved, horny at
all the most inappropriate moments and in the most embarrassing social
situations. Tanya is excessive in all
ways and at all points of physical extremity (and, as such, Haddish is an
enjoyable spectacle). The thing is: as she became a devoted Catfish fan in the pen, she just may be
onto the truth about Charlie.
Perry’s films tend to be – and feel – very long for
the stories they tell and the formats they fill. This romantic comedy is a mere
110 minutes, but it takes forever to get to its good old “turning points”. (I
won’t spoil for you where the catfishing intrigue terminates.) And when Perry
goes for the stark dramatic downturns and reversals (such as Frank’s rejection
of the deluded Danica), do they ever drag out in their consequences. In the
meantime, the narrative machinery is not quite as creaky and distended as in Acrimony – but Perry does love, for
example, the odd spot of clunky coincidence, such as when Frank’s coffee shop
happens to be (at night) also a location for soulful Alcoholics Anonymous
meetings, and hence the opportunity for Danica to surreptitiously overhear his
backstory!
What remains are the jokes. The surreal tone of the
piece is compounded right at the outset, when Tanya, hardly two minutes out of
jail, is getting humped by some stranger in the back of a van – and the
positions of their copulating bodies (as Tanya engages in some shouted conversation
with Danica and Kalli) deliberately defy all anatomical logic. Weirdly though,
for all her dirty talk, Tanya remains perfectly chaste for the rest of the
plot. There are places, it seems, where even Tyler Perry won’t go.
© Adrian Martin 23 March 2019 |
