Having soul with charm keeps 'Mad Black Woman' on an elevated plain

On the eve of their 18th wedding anniversary, Charles (Steve Harris) throws his wife Helen (Kimberly Elise) out of the house. She finds a temporary home with gun-toting grandmother Madea and her pot-smoking brother, Uncle Joe (two of three characters played by author Tyler Perry).

MOVIE REVIEW

DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN

DIRECTOR: Darren Grant

CAST: Kimberly Elise, Steve Harris, Shemar Moore,

Tyler Perry, Cicely Tyson

RUNNING TIME: 116 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for drug content, thematic elements, crude sexual references, violence

WHERE: Alderwood 7, Cinema 17, Everett 9, Galleria 11, Meridian 16, Parkway Plaza 12, Redmond Town Center, Renton Village

GRADE: C

Without Perry's crudely hilarious routines as these elder fountains of funky wisdom, "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" may have drowned in pious sincerity.

A high-powered attorney who has built his empire on crime, Charles is a portrait of ice-cold evil. Harris plays him as a villain to be loathed, and the audience awards his performance with the appropriate hisses. Helen is the long-suffering wife who feels she must dutifully bring him back to God before beginning a new life without him.

Forgiveness and redemption, while central tenets of the Christian faith, do not lend themselves to easy expression on the screen. First-time director Darren Grant gives each scene its face value, with no attempt to look for the real people and situations beneath the polemic.

Like Flip Wilson's Geraldine, Perry's Madea has become a popular figure in African American entertainment. Big as a truck and just as dangerous, she is the counterpart to Perry's own gentle character. In a world of hypocritical courts and judges, her merciless self-expression lands her repeatedly in jail. Her purpose in the film, aside from providing comic relief, is to coach Helen on how to become the mad black woman of the title. Uncle Joe also serves as a warning against the foibles of Christian charity, but the wisdom of both characters is ultimately cast aside for that of the church.

Cicely Tyson has a few brief scenes as Helen's mother, Myrtle, a pillar of goodness exiled by her son-in-law to the confines of a retirement home. Tyson is the heart of the film, a quiet angel presiding over the raucous conflicts of family life.

African American cinema, with its frequent glorification of criminal subcultures, rarely reflects the true values of the community. Perry is to be commended for his intention of creating wholesome and inspirational entertainment that still deals with the unpleasant realities facing the African American family.

He is skating on thin ice with "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" and there are plenty of cracks in that ice. Some of the dialog is so corny ("I know you don't believe in fairy tales, but if you did, I would want to be your knight in shining armor.") that you have to laugh to keep from cringing. Still, the movie has a soul, and its good-natured charm may well win over the most cynical heart.

Bill White is a Seattle-based arts and entertainment writer. He can be reached at Bwhi61@hotmail.com