Earlier this month, the release date of Tyler Perry’s latest directorial effort, For Colored Girls, got pushed up from January to November, landing it smack in the middle of the Oscar race. This is less surprising than it may sound, given For Colored Girls’ highbrow pedigree. The film is based on the play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange, which is structured as a series of twenty prose poems delivered by women. Judging from the trailer, much of the poetry remains. None of the lines delivered — by a cast that includes Janet Jackson, Thandie Newton, Whoopi Goldberg, Kerry Washington, Phylicia Rashad — sound like regular dialogue. A little more regular is the big group hug scene and the omnipresent vibe of melodrama. While we can’t say we’re sold on the film’s merits based on this trailer, we also can’t say we’re not interested in seeing how Perry handles — or fails to handle — genuinely deep source material on race, gender, and sex, not to mention poetry.
