Just watched this film today... what an "EXCELLENT" film!!!!!!!!!! All the actors did awesome jobs @ bringing the characters to life. It's not a "Chick Flick" either. Even dudes will enjoy this one. I'm definitely going to go see it again. It's that good. Believe me on this.

A strong, depressing and intense adaption of the stage play "For Colored Girls(Who considered suicide when the rainbow is enough). This is a stark tale, full of emotion, mind blowing situations and the magic of poetry. Tyler Perry does an excellent job creating this flash back to the 70's. It must have been a difficult task redefining a popular stage play such as this one. The cast was remarkable, and even though there were no men in the original writing(men were only referred to) the male characters here, were able to push the female characters all brilliantly played in the right direction. I truly enjoyed this new Tyler Perry production, although the play was a little more inspirational and uplifting, this is a new way of looking at visual entertainment.

5/5 It was powerful. It was masterful. It was gut wrenching but great. Dark in the best way...in a real way. Poetic, soft and hard, weak and strong, lying and revealing the truth. It cut you and gave you strength. If this does not win an award then I don't know what deserves it. It was given a 3.8 on IMDB; an outrage. It did justice to the play, "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf". The intentionality of the play was preserved giving voice to important issues that women of colour and women as a whole do face. Some new characters and stories are not a bother even if they were not in the play because they are relevant issues that women confront; real choices that women make; real mistakes that women live with. I cried. I screamed. I am recovering. If you haven't watched it then you need to.
"Thank you Tyler for being bold enough to bring this movie, play, book, music, to the world. Thank you for an ensemble of talented women who poured their souls into their roles. Thank you for allowing every woman of every color to understand that they are not alone in those things that bring pain and torment to their souls. Thank you for giving them permission, through the character, to open up. Thank you for telling my story."-anjelathart (New Orleans, LA) I echo her sentiment because this movie is as light as mantle and as shallow as the ocean.
Every woman should watch it. All this I have not mentioned the incredible acting, directing, pacing, cinematography, and music this film has to offer. All done exceptionally well. It might have felt stage-y but I think it makes it more of a piece of art because of it which lends itself to the frequent poems that are uttered in the film. I loved every minute of it. Some might call it cliche but most cliches are based on true facts and experiences. This film is not about the light of men but the darkness that women deal with. The men are not the focus and are severely underdeveloped as a result. They are the mirrors, props and catalysts for the stories to be told but it no different for stories centered about men's lives. It is beautiful in it's resounding cry of pain and call for strength and reflection. We each "find the root to pluck it out" so that we live and it dies.

i am not saying that i absolutely loved it over i am blown away by this movie, it was a decent contribution to the these type of Art house movies, it was Mr Tyler Perry's first time doing this kind of movie. he did a decent job not a great one but of course he will someday but that doesn't mean to just slam this movie, give extremely bad reviews. i don't understand why critics hate it so much. i know i did not liked the whole movie or somethings in it but that doesn't mean to just call it a disaster.

movie was really disturbing and very emotional, seeing these different women's life and their different problems they face and all that things were really well shown but the problem is that they were first of all too much to show in little time, audience could not just connect with it instantly, too many stories too many emotions. i think this was the problem why everyone is hating this movie. this movie has perfect casting and very great performances. Janet, kimberly, Thandie, Loretta, Phylicia and everyone else performed brilliantly their own characters. somewhat overdone but its ok. little bit problem in the writing of this movie, something to really notice and editing too.

women can see that their are many different ways of abuses they have and men can see how they effects and completely change upside down women's life. Any woman can relate and men as well can see and hear struggles that their mothers,sisters, wives and friends never talk about. its deep, intense and passionate BUT definitely with some flaws or other wise this could have been a great movie. AND yes it doesn't reminded me of Precious i mean come on people grow up. Go see it for just MR Tyler perry.

For Colored Girls (2010)

An artful, gutsy, moving experience.

You could easily see this movie and say that it's overly artful, overtly gutsy, and overwhelmingly moving experience. You would have to like this kind of high drama. Very high drama. And I do, and so I loved this movie.

If you've seen "Crash" you know how this movie is put together--a series of high powered characters in tough situations are followed separately in an interwoven and increasingly connected urban universe. This is a work about women, African-American women, and about their ultimately horrible plight in a world of greed, horror, and men, who don't come off very well. So they turn increasingly inward, and to each other, to survive.

Director Tyler Perry has great material here--the Ntozake Shange play that wowed Broadway in 1975. One of the strengths here is one of the things people find irritating--the characters speak at times in long lines of poetic monologue. It isn't realistic, but it's beautiful, and in fact it really is poetry, and is part of the overall style. This helps form the overall aura of the movie, as well, of highbrow seriousness in a gutsy, often low income narrative. The story gets tweaked for 2010, though some of the themes don't make sense for our times, most glaring the backstreet abortion.

The acting is fabulous, and uniformly so. Everyone is able to really pour it on, which is difficult when they are sometimes speaking through actual poetry. And so through all the tears comes a realization that this very artificially outrageous drama has deeply deeply serious intentions.

If you like movies for how they are made--the editing, the filming, the set design--you'll be impressed. It's highly artful in a Hollywood, expensive way, an uncompromised production. Of course, as a viewer, you have to like that, especially when it gets artsy, as when a mother and daughter speak in two simultaneous monologues and the camera, and the sound, film back and forth between them, while still delicately keeping both threads continuous and palpable throughout. And the moment has huge symbolism, too, because it's about how they never understand each other, even when they pretend to try.

If there's a large problem here, it's in the endless excess. There is more tragedy, and more emotional crisis, than you can handle in a movie. I think it starts to be a parody of itself, and toward the end you are just ready for a catharsis. The choreographed ending is a little predictable and breezy, too, though even here, when the women gather on the roof, there is still a complex, interwove poetic power.

So, forget the cynics and the impatient, if you can, that have slammed this film. It's not a typical Tyler Perry movie at all. It's a smart, beautiful film.

This is a very moving emotional movie. This is not a movie for a weak heart. It makes you face the evils that is really out there in world. Make sure to bring a box of Kleenex because you will cry. The movie was filled with a great cast of wonderful actresses.

I have mixed feelings about this movie. If your not a woman and have not read the book you are not going to understand it.READ THE BOOK. Also, if you don't like poetry don't even bother. I do think that Tyler Perry could have done better at directing it. He should have portrayed each character a little better. I believe he got Janet character wrong.He should have stuck with the book and add his own ideas. Love the book, but not the movie. Overall 3/5, bad directing, great acting.

For once, Tyler Perry doesn't put his name above the title, but perhaps he should with "For Colored Girls" to distinguish this train wreck of a movie from the stunning theater piece of 36 years ago by Ntozake Shange. For Colored Girls" brings to the screen Ntozake Shange's Obie Award-winning play, a poetic exploration of what is to be of color and a female in this world. Hers was a tragic and sensuous hybrid of poetry, dance, drama and feminist theology -- it even has been called the most important work about black female identity ever. Perry might be very much in touch with his feminine side when he dons a dress and padding to play his larger-than-life character Madea, but his style is too crude and stagy for Shange's transformative evocation of black female life, and his moralizing strikes exactly the wrong notes to express the pain and longing that cries out from her heated poetry.

From its inception in California in 1974 to its highly acclaimed critical success at Joseph Papp's Public Theater and on Broadway, the Obie Award-winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enufhas excited, inspired, and transformed audiences all over the country. Passionate and fearless, Shange's words reveal what it is to be of color and female in the twentieth century. First published in 1975 when it was praised by The New Yorkerfor "encompassing...every feeling and experience a woman has ever had," for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enufwill be read and performed for generations to come. Here is the complete text, with stage directions, of a groundbreaking dramatic prose poem written in vivid and powerful language that resonates with unusual beauty in its fierce message to the world.

The film is going to be great starring Janet Jackson and the book was great too.

"Girls" certainly will turn off those who know Shange's play, but what will Perry's usual audience make of his foray into date rape, domestic violence, homosexuality, back-room abortion and promiscuity? One should never gainsay Perry's ability to attract large opening-weekend crowds, but word-of- mouth could be toxic."For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf" -- to give the full title of the theater piece -- never was going to make an easy transition to the screen. The "choreopoem," as Shange dubbed it, has no conventional plot or characters. Performers give life to the poetry as characters are described merely as "lady in red" or "lady in white." In so doing, they speak to the issues of sexuality, violence, spirituality and the discovery of one's identity.

No, it never was going to be easy, but someone needed to put creative sweat into this one, to reach for cinematic solutions to the theatrical challenge. All Perry does is force conventional plots and characters -- utter cliches without lives or souls -- into the fabric of Shange's literary work. The hackneyed melodramas get him from one poem to the next but run roughshod over the collective sense of who these women are.Then, when Perry arrives at the next poetic passage, the switch in writing between him and Shange is jarringly pronounced. The words belong to different worlds.

Perry situates his nine female protagonists in Harlem, supposedly in the modern day, but then how does a backroom abortion figure into this contemporary scene? Most of his women live in a crummy walk-up tenement, though not Janet Jackson's Jo, a high-powered magazine executive with a corner office and an East Side penthouse. Perry gives his frequent star no favors here, with hairdo, makeup and clothes that make her look like a mannequin.However, Jo's beleaguered assistant, Crystal (Kimberly Elise) -- Perry's commercial instincts insist that he lifts from "The Devil Wears Prada" -- does live in that walk-up, where an abusive, alcoholic husband (Michael Ealy) is a constant threat to her and their two children. Building manager Gilda (Phylicia Rashad) has her eye on the situation as well as the one across the hall where Tangie (Thandie Newton) entertains a different man every night.

Tangie's Bible-toting mother, Alice (Whoopi Goldberg), and a younger sister, Nyla (Tessa Thompson), occupy an apartment downstairs, which keeps a kind of demilitarized zone between members of the warring family. Meanwhile, Juanita (Loretta Devine) down the hall fails to listen to her own advice as a nurse who runs a women's clinic at a community center when she continually lets a two-timing guy back into her life.Others who get connected to the building include Kelly (Kerry Washington), a social worker who responds to Gilda's call about child abuse and inexplicably does nothing about it, and Yasmine (Anika Noni Rose), who teaches dance to Nyla.

The male characters other than Hill Harper's police detective are all sick cartoons, existing only to perpetuate horrors on the women. In Perry's peculiar view, though, the women often collaborate in their victimhood. They invite the stranger into the home or let men stay when they clearly should go. They all fall from grace.When reciting Shange's words, the actresses often achieve moments of splendor. Some even achieve dignity within the hoary melodrama. This is especially true of Rashad, who acts as a kind of Greek chorus; Elise, whose character must cope with unspeakable tragedy; and Rose, who must search for an outlet for her rage and humiliation.All technical aspects of the production are solid, though the sets never fail to look like sets.

Opens: Friday, Nov. 5 (Lionsgate)Production: Lionsgate and TPS present a 34th Street Films/Lionsgate productionCast: Janet Jackson, Loretta Devine, Michael Ealy, Kimberly Elise, Omari Hardwick, Hill Harper, Thandie Newton, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, Tessa Thompson, Kerry Washington, Whoopi Goldberg, Macy GrayDirector-screenwriter: Tyler PerryBased on the play by: Ntozake ShangeProducers: Tyler Perry, Paul Hall, Roger M. BobbExecutive producers: Ozzie Areu, Joseph P. Genier, Nzingha Stewart, Michael PaseornekDirector of photography: Alexander GruszynskiProduction designer: Ina MayhewMusic: Aaron ZigmanCostume designer: Johnetta BooneEditor: Maysie HoyRated R, 120 minutes

THE ONE THE ONLY THE NEW FROM TYLER PERRY

I received a message that consisted of untruths and etc. They asked for my entire film regarding subject matter and opion, well here you go.
My comment wasn't towards those who either liked or disliked the film, that's so unimportant. My typing was in regards to those who claims that this picture makes Black women look bad. No one claimed that this film is to set the overall tone of who we ALL are or what our life is everyday. Don't be so defensive. You make it sound like we should be embarrassed, as if this film airs all our dirty laundry. A film consisting of an all female cast baring their downsides somehow means that they are weak, pathetic and/or stupid. I think not. I will not feel ashamed to admit that I have had many tragedies in my life, does such an honest admission make me less than? This is a glimpse into some womens's lives, a chance to feel out someone else's shoes if you have been so blessed to have never worn them. Some have been very quick to announce how they have nothing in common with ANY of these women, now if that doesn't that say something. A Black woman that isn't strong 24/7, 365 days a year is an embarrassment to our kind and can deteriorate any positive images of us that we have in this world? Wow, that's sure a heck of a lot of responsibility don't you think? That gives a pretty good idea of what you think about the characters, someone in real life, how you see yourself or how others may view you. Thinking like that is what makes most of us deny the want to vent, the want to open up when we are in such dier need.

There are so many films made about rape, abuse and whatever else where the cast are usually only White and I didn't hear anyone yelping about how that makes ALL White women appear stupid, uneducated, their lives are nothing but negativity blah..blah..blah.. so why be so hard on a film that consists of the same topics that has a colourful cast? Some of us can appreciate seeing a different face, sometimes it helps to better relate or evoke open discussions about uncomfortable topics. Sometimes when attempting to parallel your hard luck story to another you can at times feel “They just don’t understand” because they look nothing like you.

Why over think the word "colored" in this case, think about the time when the play was first performed, so many people were so used to using that term, having been called that and so much worse most of their lives. This perhaps may not be the complete reason for the word’s usage, but it most def’ should be considered and how that word is used In the film. BTW the male characters being Black perpetuate a stereotype? Everyone is well aware that crappy men come in all diff. shades. Its evident some are not focusing on the topic at hand so there goes another thing that just flew over another cuckoo's head.

I've never heard any women gripe about, "Waiting to Exhale". I love that film and have easily watched 10 times, that entire film is based on women's hardships, setting cars on fire, adultery, relationship problems, abortion, accepting any man just to say you’re not alone & so on. I've only heard men gripe as if Ms. McMillan said to them, "I'm talking 'bout you Mickey Fickey", “Yeah you sucka”. The film, “The Women of Brewster’s Place” also has important subject matter.

If one person or journalist's article claims that Tyler Perry perpetuates bad images of the "Black" community so many latch onto the idea without one moment to consider their own POV. Of all people to place the blame for the bad imagery of us or claim that this person perpetuates stereotypes is completely ridiculous. Everything he's produced may not be award winning, however his plays and movies forever contain a blatant and important message that are never often enough spoken of in the Black community: Rape, abuse, sexual abuse, cheating, marriage, teen pregnancy, drug use, Mother/daughter, health, family, absent father, lost teen youth, faith in God (if you are a believer), music, hope and so much more. He is certainly not the one perpetuating the "chitlin circle" crap we've all come to know.

Attempt to better understand a subject matter before making empty complaints or typing inane commentary. You asked me to further elaborate and give it to you straight, well there you go.
Thank you LMWT & who ever posted the film. - Stolee

Let me give credit to having made such an attempt to transfer a hit stage play to the big screen, but let's pretend that the play never existed. The issues were present, but not taken full advantage of. Parts of the film lacked a focus or seemed confused as to what the next direction should be, even lacking consistency. I understand what Mr. Perry's intention was, but it did not execute. The beginning of the movie felt rushed, indecisive and a bit confused as to what direction it wanted to take when introducing these ladies, even sloppy. Further on in the film I got the feeling that the movie appeared to not have enough time for each character, however the film had almost two hours.
Kerry Washington's character and pain was not fully expressed nor given much time for us to delve into. Kerry was almost forgettable, her scenes did not pertain much to whom she was and her personal angst. I enjoyed Ms. Goldberg's character until I felt her point became a bit too nonsense. Her character when interacting w/ her daughter should have been written better, subtract the diversion of her over zealous approach when concerning her beliefs. I felt as though I was witnessing a scene from, “Carrie”. The ups and downs of a Mother/ daughter relationship can be such a wound on one's identity and in the long run have an effect on both. Period Ms. Goldberg was almost made irrelevant, that I did not like. The scenes did not delivery so greatly; instead they became somewhat lost in translation and served nothing good. Kimberly Elise's scenes and full acting ability were not so much felt until after the middle of the movie concerning her children and her significant other. All of the actresses did a great job especially, Loretta Devine & Thandie Newton. I would have liked to see Phylicia Rashad more, but I thought it best the scenes we got to see her in because they were just right, two thumbs up.
There were definitely scenes that were full of expression, emotional taps and just the right tone that drew me in, however I felt as they could be overlooked because of other scenes that lacked the ability to properly convey these ladies perils. This movie had me up and down. I wish there could be a do over, like keep the middle to the end of the film and redo the beginning. In the end you cannot alter a movie that's already been made however you can either like it or not and just give your own opinion. The topics are still vital regardless of how they are presented to us, which at the end of the day is all that matters. I'd recommend this film. I give this film a 3.4/5.

An artful, gutsy, moving experience.

You could easily see this movie and say that it's overly artful, overtly gutsy, and overwhelmingly moving experience. You would have to like this kind of high drama. Very high drama. And I do, and so I loved this movie.

If you've seen "Crash" you know how this movie is put together--a series of high powered characters in tough situations are followed separately in an interwoven and increasingly connected urban universe. This is a work about women, African-American women, and about their ultimately horrible plight in a world of greed, horror, and men, who don't come off very well. So they turn increasingly inward, and to each other, to survive.

Director Tyler Perry has great material here--the Ntozake Shange play that wowed Broadway in 1975. One of the strengths here is one of the things people find irritating--the characters speak at times in long lines of poetic monologue. It isn't realistic, but it's beautiful, and in fact it really is poetry, and is part of the overall style. This helps form the overall aura of the movie, as well, of highbrow seriousness in a gutsy, often low income narrative. The story gets tweaked for 2010, though some of the themes don't make sense for our times, most glaring the backstreet abortion.

The acting is fabulous, and uniformly so. Everyone is able to really pour it on, which is difficult when they are sometimes speaking through actual poetry. And so through all the tears comes a realization that this very artificially outrageous drama has deeply deeply serious intentions.

If you like movies for how they are made--the editing, the filming, the set design--you'll be impressed. It's highly artful in a Hollywood, expensive way, an uncompromised production. Of course, as a viewer, you have to like that, especially when it gets artsy, as when a mother and daughter speak in two simultaneous monologues and the camera, and the sound, film back and forth between them, while still delicately keeping both threads continuous and palpable throughout. And the moment has huge symbolism, too, because it's about how they never understand each other, even when they pretend to try.

If there's a large problem here, it's in the endless excess. There is more tragedy, and more emotional crisis, than you can handle in a movie. I think it starts to be a parody of itself, and toward the end you are just ready for a catharsis. The choreographed ending is a little predictable and breezy, too, though even here, when the women gather on the roof, there is still a complex, interwove poetic power.

So, forget the cynics and the impatient, if you can, that have slammed this film. It's not a typical Tyler Perry movie at all. It's a smart, beautiful film.