Tyler Perry has evolved in a way over the past couple years. He started out by pandering to a specific audience, people of faith from urban areas, and has no slowly expanded out from merely going for a more minority audience to targeting the biggest audience Hollywood under serves: women. His resume as of late has slowly gone from being solely focused on that specific area to being one that’s more female centric. It’s interesting that Perry, who’s most famous character is one of himself in drag, is moving slowly towards this audience after his brief stint as an action hero in Alex Cross.
He’s back in the director’s chair for The Single Mom’s Club, his opus to those women who have found themselves in the position to have to raise children on their own.
Simple premise. A handful of single moms (Nia Long, Cocoa Brown, Wendi McLoven-Covey, Zulay Henao, Amy Smart) from all walks of life come together during an incident at school that affects all their children. Thus they band together to handle their problems together as a support group because they don’t need a man and such, right? They can do it on their own.
For all the faults of Hollywood’s inability to make cinema for women, the downside is that they make terrible films like this with women in mind instead of making great films with women in main roles. This is just a glorified “girl power” type of film that guys make fun of and for good reason. It’s terrible on nearly every level as Perry is in outright pander mode from minute one. There isn’t an honest moment in this film that will ring true; everything is in his usual overly dramatic pandering style and there’s nothing honest or engaging about it. He’s preaching to the congregation, expecting that the people watching this will pat him on the back for parroting what they think instead of trying to convey an honest and meaningful message about being a single mother.
This is your usual terrible Perry film but with a slightly wider focus. Avoid at all costs.
In terms of extras, if you want to call them that, is a pair of EPK pieces and that’s it.
Lionsgate presents The Single Mom’s Club . Written and Directed by Tyler Perry. Starring Nia Long, Amy Smart, Cocoa Brown, Wendi McLoven-Covey, Tyler Perry, Terry Crews. Running time: 111 minutes. Rated PG-13. Released: July 22, 2014.
