Review of Why Did I Get Married Too? (2010) by Chads — 03 Apr 2010

Respect Tyler Perry. He's so successful, you have to. If winning over the hearts and minds of his many detractors was a going concern to this culturally polarizing filmmaker, Madea(his most hated.

..and loved creation) would have been put out to pasture by now. Thankfully, contemporary cinema's most recognizable transvestite(who must have Billy Wilder rolling in his grave), sits this one out, the sequel to 2008's "Why Did I Get Married", although her spirit is alive and well in Patricia(Janet Jackson), a representational drag king.

The filmmaker doesn't dress Jackson up in men's clothing, but she's a male impersonator in the sense that she wears the "pants" in her matrimonial relationship with Gavin(Malik Yoba).

After Patricia calls it quits at the couples retreat(where the dialogue is so mundane, all the film needed was a digital video camera to make it blaxploitation mumblecore), the best-selling author emasculates Gavin for his claim that he has a right to half of all her publishing royalties.

After all, she's the bread-winner, and since a good portion of "Why Did I Get Married Too" uses the beach as a setting, it can be said that Gavin is like the wind beneath her wings. In order to restore the natural order of things, the p****-whipped architect gets violent.

Because Patricia changed the locks, Gavin re-asserts himself as the dominant sex by breaking and entering with a potted plant through the front window of his former home. For the moment, he has the upper hand, but Patricia is no shrinking violet.

Still fuming over her husband's power grab at the divorce proceedings, Tyler Perry(as Terry, who is there at the scene like a kind of conduit), seemingly transfers Madea's propensity for violent outbursts over to Jackson, who demolishes the house with a golf club.

In a later scene, Patricia taunts Gavin by repeatedly calling him a "little bitch"(evocative of Madea's sass), but is punished for assuming the patriarchal role(which goes against the Christian ideal that a woman "love, honor, and obey" her husband) with a sudden tragedy that is absurd in its southern fried operatic-ness.

A pair of balls is unbecoming on a Perry-styled woman, so the filmmaker cuts them off by making Patricia sorry for her mannish behavior. "Why Did I Get Married Too" is not a good movie, but it's infinitely more interesting than most Hollywood romantic comedies.