Metacritic reviews

Straw is not exactly subtle, but the emotions are so raw and the performances are so earnest that you’ve really got to have a heart of stone not to care for these people.

Despite the movie's obvious excesses, it is easy to find credible hyperbole for Janiyah's perpetually drawing-the-short-straw lifestyle, where Henson's performance and chemistry with the cast drive forward the socially relevant heart of the film.

The ending is perhaps too twisting for its own good. But Henson — so deeply committed to her character’s emotional cratering — still makes us care.

Straw is too messy to be “good,” exactly — but it has a bitter relevancy, and it works.

Straw has all the feels it wants and little of the art it needs. But there’s nothing to suggest Tyler Perry would have it any other way.

As ever, Perry – who takes top billing once more as this film’s writer, director and executive producer – engages with many ideas, but none that he seems to fully understand. That includes Black women, whom he does a tremendous disservice to once again.

It’s a pull-out-all-the-stops weeper, full of martrydom, coincidence, over-the-top cruelty, manipulation and plot contrivances.