Uma Boa Ação

My first Tyler Perry movie, and far better than some of the reviewers have made out and well worth at least a 6/10.

I have always liked Thandie Newton and Brian White and they do well in their roles and make them believable, Tyler Perry is solid in the leading role, likewise Gabrielle Union was good in her role as Tyler Perry's characters girlfriend.

The story was predictable from very early on, but still interesting and worth watching. A small amount of violence, but not over done.

Nothing amazing or new for me, but definitely worth watching at least once if you like romantic movies.

I have now seen some Tyler Perry movies that weren't good (like Madea's Big Happy Family) and some that were (his adaptation of For Colored Girls... was the best so far). This one was better than expected since he doesn't play that stereotypical mammy-type character that I just mentioned nor does he put any obvious comedy scenes that makes one groan like in that first movie I just wrote about. In fact, the only character I thought was truly one-dimensional was that of his no-good-brother played by Brian White who has no business being part of their father's company but because he's family...Anyway, Perry plays perhaps the most caring of businessmen one would expect to be depicted in modern cinema as he discovers a female janitor played by Thandie Newton who's on welfare because of some personal troubles. Oh, and Perry's engaged to Gabrielle Union and has a mother played by Phylicia Rashad who's a little uptight though she also knows where she's been. In summation, Good Deeds was a nice surprise for me concerning Mr. Perry's output and on that note, I recommend it.

I look at it like this ... for a Tyler Perry movie this was a comeback. Okay some scenes were a little 'awkward' and slow, but I was impressed with this film. You can see he is trying to reset the tone of his movie making and get back to the basics of telling the story. He decided to take the lead part in this film and I think that it was a bold and precise move on Tyler's part. He had to let his audience know that he is here to stay. He is bringing his core essence of film-making that drew people to him in the first place. He is a fantastic black man who tries to cut out 'the crap' of films and just wants to display real life. He has fumbled around casting and made some 'just for giggles' films but he knows how to remind us all of just how simple we all are and how we are all connected in this game of life.

If one thing we should learn from him is his insatiable need to put us all in the shoes of another person. Let's be a little more compassionate for a man who isn't afraid to pick himself up, dust himself off and keep trying ... just my little thought ;-)

I just got through seeing Good Deeds. It was a little better than the rest of his movies but not as good as Why Did I Get Married. This movie did have that same old monotonous theme the rest of his other movies have. Even with that being said this movie was as predictable as a Scooby Doo cartoon. Now that can be said about all of Tyler Perry's movies. Phylicia Rashad, Gabrielle Union, and Thandie Newton did do their thing in this movie but that still couldn't help it. I wish Tyler Perry could come up with more imaginative story lines and make movies where you would have to actually think and be surprised as to what will happen in the movie. I mean my 11 year old step daughter can write a more complex script.

If anyone goes to the theater thinking that this film is a romantic comedy they are in for a big surprise because it is a full on drama. The first half hour of this film was almost too depressing to bare, primarily because Lindsey (Thandie Newton) found herself in one bad situation after another. This leads me to my first observation about Tyler Perry movies, which is that his characters are typically so one dimensional. He plays the male lead Wesley Deeds (Tyler Perry) and he is just entirely too predictable and too good to be true, well that is until the elevator scene. His antithesis is his brother Walter Deeds (Brian White) who is too enraged to be true. Then there is their mother Wilhimina (Phylicia Rashad) who is a true piece of work with her disdain for her younger son and complete and utter worship of her eldest. The extreme misfortune time after time that befalls Lindsey, all just became too much. People are just not that one dimensional, the only character that was somewhat rounded was Natalie (Gabrielle Union) who conveyed a whole range of emotions, which is what people do. They are happy, they are sad, they are frustrated, they are thoughtful and they sometimes get inebriated just hanging out with friends. But no one is the same all the time. I understand the approach in film making, it makes it clear what type of person the character is, so you know who to cheer or boo, but it leaves very little to the intellect of a viewer. People are not simply one emotion they are very complex, even in the span of an hour and a half. A very bright light in contrast to most of the adults was Ariel (Jordenn Thompson), what an adorable child. Which leads to my second observation of Tyler Perry movies, he does an amazing job of including exceptionally talented people in his films. I would have liked the story much better if it had focused less on the Lindsey dilemmas and more on the budding romance between Lindsey and Wesley. And I was completely thrown off with the final setting of the story because it failed credibility. I'll just say that down and out people do not typically have a passport to readily leave the country on a moment's notice, and some countries require that you receive a bevy of immunizations before visiting. With that said, I give Good Deeds an amber light.