In an effort to attract Oscar love from Academy Award voters much like last year’s “Precious,” Perry has assembled for his 10th movie an amazing cast that includes Whoopi Goldberg, Phylicia Rashad, Janet Jackson, Thandie Newton, Loretta Devine (“Death at a Funeral,” “Crash” and “Boston Public”), Kerry Washington (“Mother and Child” “The Last King of Scotland” and “Ray”) and Anika Noni Rose (“Dreamgirls”). The great acting from all hands on deck can’t lift the burden of inferior soap opera material.

The movie flits around from one woman’s personal story to the next like a moth to a flame. There is a jarring dissonance between the recitation of poetry and the conversational dialogue. The exploration of black female identity is done no favors with uncomfortable situations that will have audiences squirming in their seats.

Although there are some powerful emotional moments, this disjointed and jumbled mishmash never finds a cohesive centerpiece. Women in despair will find no solutions in this ostentatious pity party.

The sordid laundry list of subjects covered includes multiple child murder, domestic violence, date rape, sexual promiscuity, abortion, attempted suicide and abandonment.

Men get tagged as scum of the earth while the women contribute to their own misfortune by looking for love in all the wrong places.

The movie opens with a girl practicing ballet moves on a wooden floor with a violin playing. Each of the eight main characters, known only by a color in the original play, takes a turn reciting lines from a poem. Gilda (Rashad) is the busybody apartment manager of a dilapidated walk-up tenement in modern-day Harlem. Her two neighbors are Tangie (Newton), a bartender who brings home a different stranger every night for sex, and Crystal (Kimberly Elise from “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” and “Woman Thou Art Loosed”), a mother with two young children and an abusive, alcoholic live-in boyfriend saddled with PTSD stemming from military combat.

Child Welfare Services worker Kelly (Washington) comes to check on Crystal’s domestic situation. Crystal’s children have made frequent visits to the emergency room. Kelly is married to an understanding cop and unable to get pregnant because of an untreated sexually transmitted disease. Juanita (Devine) is a nurse at the hospital who has opened a nonprofit health and wellness clinic for women. She has her own problems at home with a transient two-timing boyfriend who frequently abandons her. She takes him back in like a lost puppy whenever he strays.

Jo (Jackson) is a successful magazine publisher with a corner office on Madison Avenue and a swanky penthouse apartment. Her stockbroker husband has stolen money from their joint account without her permission to speculate on a stock. Her trust issues are further damaged when her gynecologist informs her that she has the AIDS virus. She suspects that her husband has been sleeping with other men. Her longtime office assistant happens to be Crystal.

Yasmine (Rose) is an ebullient dance instructor with an optimistic outlook on life. She met a guy on a crowded subway two short weeks ago. They have a pleasant first date and share a friendly good night kiss. He asks her to cook dinner the next time they get together. She gets more than she bargained for when he starts removing his clothes.

Nyla (Tessa Thompson) is one of the dancers in Yasmine’s class. She lives with her religiously fanatic mother, Alice (Goldberg). Her older sister is Tangie. She lies to her mother when asking for the college application fee of $300. Tangie figures out that Nyla is secretly pregnant and sends her to a vodka-drinking, back-alley abortionist. Alice bears the burden of shame for sleeping with a white man at her father’s insistence to produce beautiful babies.

You can see how all these characters are intertwined and loosely connected. The movie attempts to bring all the strands together and closes with a group pose on a rooftop.

The two-hour running time seems interminable. The thought-provoking material about women paying a high price for making bad choices and ultimately finding their own voice may work on stage, but it’s like putting a square peg in a round hole for a film.

Review By:
Keith Cohen "The Movie Guy"