Daddy's Little Girls

"Daddy's Little Girls" is a decent/good movie that could have been a great movie. I say that it is a decent movie because the overall plot was pretty solid and the acting was very good. However, it could have been a great film if the story could have been told with greater detail and the film had been better edited.

Let's put it this way, if T.P. were to have written this film as a school paper, the teacher would have given it a C+. The theme and concept for the paper would have been sound and offered lots of potential – a solid B. However, due to punctuation errors, grammar errors, misspelled words and run-on sentences (For those who took English at Howard U – instant D)….the teacher was being nice to give T.P. a C+.

T.P. has done only one great movie – "Diary Of A Mad Black Woman". The second film was cute. This 3rd film was OK. I will give him the benefit of the doubt for this film, he probably has many other things that he is working on. However, for the next film, he better take the time to write, direct and edit a high quality product.

I saw this film recently at the Black Film Maker International Film Festival here in London.

Not at all like Perry's previous films which have both been premiered at the festival in the last few years. Instead of broad Christian Cross-Dressing Gun Totting Comedy, what we have here is a gentle romantic drama with a smattering of jokes here and there.

At got to say it wasn't to bad though I have to admit I preferred the Meadea films. The performances were OK especially the leading actors Union & Elba. The story is a bit hackneyed but I guess that's the cynic in me. You kind of knew exactly how the film was going to end from the open credits. The audience I saw it with loved it.

That got me thinking why can't you see Perry's work in the UK other than at the BFM Film Festival. Why not release the films on DVD, any visit to Dalston/Brixton/Harlesden in London will tell you that's there's a great illicit trade in Perry's films.

Anyway, if you like a undemanding and somewhat unoriginal romantic drama this is just the thing for you.

Black Narcissus

My wife and I went to check out "Daddy's Little Girls" not knowing what to expect, seeing that this Tyler Perry production did not have his outrageous Madea character in it. We came away pleasantly surprised with what we saw.

The problem that some moviegoers have with this film is quite simple: they're trying to be movie critics. They look for "movie elements" and generally are disappointed, not realizing that over 99% of people who buy tickets to a movie are not there to critique it in a cinematic context, but more in a entertainment context. You go to a horror movie to be scared to wit's end, not to break down and find the climax, anticlimax, and plot twists. You're there for gore, blood, and screams. With pretty much any Tyler Perry movie, a huge majority of those who watch them are there to either be inspired, to gain insight and maybe a lesson or two on life, or to see what Madea will say next. And if you have that mindset when you enter the theater to see this film, you will probably not come out disappointed.

The trailer showed this film more in a comedic light, but it is by far a drama with interspersed moments of humor. While some of the characters may at first come off as so outrageous as to be comical, they still had some semblance of believability to them. And for a 95-minute film, there's no way to completely dissect every character and why they are the way they are. And again, many non-movie critics understand this.

Idris Elba does a great job stepping away from his more well-known Stringer Bell persona. Though his accent (while not indicative of his British roots is still Stringer-sounding) wouldn't indicate that his character is from Atlanta (where the movie is set), his character is still engrossing. Gabrielle Union does a notable job as the female lead, and Lou Gossett, Jr.'s brief appearances give the movie more context and a slight bit more depth.

If you are a fan of Tyler Perry's plays, you will recognize his approach and the technique to this movie, and though it does not have the cantankerous Madea giving us lessons on life, it still will probably leave a mark on the moviegoer if (s)he goes into the theater to be inspired.

Monty is an honest black man working as a mechanic, financially supporting his three daughters who live with his ex-wife's mother. When his mother-in-law dies, Monty is left looking after his daughters and takes on extra work as a driver for young, pretty and very successful lawyer Julia. His first day on the job brings disaster though as one of his daughters starts a fire, forcing him to take Julia to the hospital, getting him fired and social services handing his kids to their estranged mother (who lives with the local drug dealer). Monty is forced to go for custody to keep his girls but cannot get a lawyer and only a moment of kindness from Julia sees her take his case for free. While she works with him she begins to fall for his charms despite the gulf in their social status.

I want to be clear that, although I came to this film off the back of The Wire, I did not expect it to be of the same quality (or even the same genre) and I did not come to it with my mind made up or some sort of chip on my shoulder that Elba should only do projects that Wire fans somehow approve of in line with his brilliant turn as Stringer Bell. No, I came to the film because I like him as a screen presence and was happy to see this film for what it was – a romantic drama. In the broad sweep the film is OK in very base terms but the biggest problem with it is evident from the very start. Within a few minutes of the start we have a saintly old woman coughing and come comments made about her health and I immediately said "she's not making it long into this" – fade to her funeral seconds later! This is one example but there are lots of examples of really poor development and convenient narrative jumps. This may not sound like a problem but consider the main thrust of the film is the relationship between Julia and Monty convincing and engaging.

Sadly it never does and it felt like the writers had developed this in about three stages. 1: snotty impatient dislike of Monty; 2: he's not all bad but it's not for me; 3: Monty is the love of my life. The thing is that there is literally nothing between these stages and it feels like a switch has been flicked to move from one to another with the impact on the film being that it simply doesn't feel real. This left me not caring too much about the relationship throughout. The case of the title is similarly unengaging as it doesn't ring true either – it is written to elicit emotions from the viewer but by being so lame it just didn't suck me in or produce any dramatic tension at all. It isn't all bad though because it does have a very basic charm to it and, as a daytime TV movie, it would work really well for the target audience – it is just a shame that that is the best you can say about it because of how poorly written all of it is – the final five minutes being an example of everything being tied up whether it makes total sense or not. I understand that there is an element of Capraesque community fairytale here and I have no problem with that but didn't think it excused it from being "good" in areas of writing, characters and development.

The reason for me coming to the film is one of its few strengths. Elba doesn't get anywhere near the complexity or intensity of Stringer Bell of course (not that the Emmy's would agree with my summary of his acting in that) but he still has a good presence and makes for a lovable lead character. His charm and looks does help the film get away with a lot. The harder acting role is Julia because you have to make this character change convincingly and also be horrid early on without pushing the audience away. The bad news is that this role went to Union, who doesn't have the greatest range. She cannot make it work and her performance is really simple and totally unconvincing as being a real person. Her looks do not help her that much here and the lack of reality in her character breaks the chemistry between her and Elba. The kids are cute and slightly annoying in their delivery, being too obvious in doing what they are doing. Nobody else has much to do – Gossett Jr rolls through in an attempt to add some weight to the film by his name, Smith, Ross, Williams, Vaughn and others all do the basics but not much more.

Daddy's Little Girls is a very basic film that will work best in a few years when you stumble upon on in the middle of TVM stuff in the middle of a weekday but even then it is pretty thin stuff. It relies heavily on Elba and Union's performances, both of whom try their best but don't have decent characters and simply try to charm their way through. The writing is poor as it lacks any flow or development worth talking about and it feels like it was delivered in blocks. Were it funnier, more dramatic or more engaging, this wouldn't matter but the film is not good enough to cover the development problem and it gets dull and silly very quickly with only Afro-Caribbean TVM weepy fans being left loving it.

The biggest problem with this is that it's so totally predictable almost from the very beginning. Is there any surprise that comes up at any point in the entire movie? About the only thing thrown in that threw me off for a few minutes was the rape conviction against Monty (Idris Elba) which ended up being explained away anyway. The basis of the story, of course, was Monty's frantic need to get custody of his 3 daughters back from his ex-wife, who's hooked up with a drug dealer and seems to be into some pretty bad stuff herself. That leads to his budding relationship with Julia (Gabrielle Union) - a high powered lawyer who had employed Monty as her driver for a while, and finds herself strangely drawn to him both personally and professionally, as she ends up representing him. There's a lot of extraneous material thrown in - the community's combination of outrage and impotence against local drug dealers, the wrong side of the tracks romance between Monty and Julia, the situation the kids find themselves in when they're taken away from Monty and handed over to their mother. Sometimes it seemed as if there was a bit too much extraneous material to be honest.

What I liked about the movie was the decision to make the girls' father the good guy, and the fact that the black community living in Monty's neighbourhood was shown to be diverse and mostly good, honest folk with a few losers thrown in. I also liked the performances from Elba and Union - they worked well together - and from the 3 McClain girls (I assume sisters themselves) who played Monty's children. They were as far removed from irritating child actors as you could imagine. They were quite good.

Unfortunately, what I didn't like about this was the predictability of the whole thing. There was virtually no dramatic tension throughout, because you knew without any doubt how pretty much everything was going to turn out. That really drags a movie down in my opinion. (4/10)