As Garotinhas do Papai

No one could ever accuse Tyler Perry of being the soul of subtlety - either as a filmmaker or as a storyteller. His set-ups are often painfully contrived, with characters who are two-dimensional and stereotypical, and messages that are pat and overly simplistic, to put it mildly. Yet, in this era when too many black characters are either rappers, street thugs, prostitutes or drug dealers, Perry speaks to audiences yearning to see a more positive vision of the African-American experience portrayed on screen. That's certainly an admirable goal, but the problem is that Perry himself is not above indulging in many of those very same stereotypes if, in so doing, it helps him to get his message across.

In "Daddy's Little Girls," the first ethnic stereotype Perry admirably endeavors to shatter is that of the absent or indifferent urban black father. His protagonist, Monty, is a divorced dad of three who works as an auto mechanic in a garage run by none other than Louis Gossett Jr. Monty's ex has pretty much flown the coop, leaving the kids to be raised by her mother who is currently dying of lung cancer. After the woman's death, Jennifer decides she now wants to raise the children, even though she's living with a gangsta' boyfriend who's so low he even sells drugs to the kids in the neighborhood schoolyard. This sets up a fierce custody battle between Monty and Jennifer with the three girls caught in the middle.

As stated previously, it is commendable that Perry wishes to make Monty a model for young male viewers to emulate, but in order to establish Monty's bona fides as a caring father, the filmmaker for some reason has found it necessary to ratchet up the mother's vileness past the point of believability. In fact, Jennifer makes Cinderella's evil stepmother look like June Cleaver and Carol Brady in comparison. Indeed, she is so over-the-top in her villainy that one wonders how such a seemingly level-headed and sweet-tempered soul as Marty could ever have been fooled into marrying her.

Perry doesn't do much better with the main female character, a snooty, high-priced African-American lawyer named Julia, who looks down her nose on poor working-class stiffs like Monty who takes a position as her much-abused chauffeur in order to make a little money on the side. Monty soon discovers that all the over-stressed Julia needs is a good man to bring meaning to her sterile, empty life. Thus, with the character of Julia, Perry manages to insult blacks, career women and specifically black career women in one fell swoop.

The movie makes some interesting points about the role class consciousness plays in the black community, with wealthy blacks sometimes more dismissive of their less well-off counterparts than are wealthy whites. Unfortunately, this theme is played out in the context of a fairly formulaic romance between Monty and Julia, with the "little girls" of the title reduced to not much more than walk-on roles in the story. Idris Elba is appealing and solid as the sincere, hardworking Monty, while Gabrielle Union does what she can with the poorly written part of Julia.

The narrative also suffers from what first-year screen writing students (or "Crash" deriders) like to refer to as "coincidence overload," with characters bumping into one another at all-too-convenient moments or just happening to learn crucial bits of information from news stories on TV.

"Daddy's Little Girls" starts off with the best of intentions, and there are certainly some poignant, touching moments to be found in the film, but the movie is so fixated on pandering to the emotions of its audience, especially in the melodramatic final reel, that most of the goodwill one brings to the project has pretty much evaporated by the time the closing credits come rolling by.

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.

"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.

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)

Daddy's Little Girls is my favorite Tyler Perry film so far. I am a recent fan of Tyler Perry's work my first film being Meet the Browns and ever since I was hooked. Tyler Perry works hard to make his films feel real and he never disappoints. In this film a man is trying to buy a garage while helping his three daughters grandmother take care of them. When tragedy strikes an almost never-ending battle for his children begins. As he must try and get his children back from the clutches of their drug dealing mother he is about to fail. Then a successful yet mean lawyer comes into his life just in time. With her help he might be able get his daughters back and maybe find someone to love just as all hope seemed lost.

This is probably one of Tyler Perry's most realistic films. It has some humor to help lighten the mood and some nice moments to give you a good feeling of whats about to happen.