'Why Did I Get Married Too?' Better Question: Why Did Tyler Perry Make This Movie?

A A A Comments (0) By Melissa Anderson Thursday, Apr 1 2010

Tyler Perry follows up his best film, 2007’s Why Did I Get Married?, with his worst. This time, the four couples in various states of marital discord vacation not in Colorado but in the Bahamas — mainly so that Michael Jai White’s Marcus can remain shirtless — before resuming their buppie lives in Atlanta (the WDIGM films are the only ones in the Perry oeuvre that openly celebrate, rather than vilify, the bourgeoisie).

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Where the original succeeded as an honest attempt to explore real adult problems within a fairly taut structure, the sequel stretches out its interminable 121 minutes — the amount of time it usually takes the impresario to release a new film — with endless reaction shots before the distended plot is resolved by shamefully lazy (even by Perry’s standards) interventions.

Fans of Janet Jackson, playing a psychologist married to Malik Yoba, the ensemble’s most talented performer, may get some insight into how she worked through her grief after Michael’s death (onscreen, a golf club comes in handy); I chuckled occasionally at the Madea-like outbursts of Tasha Smith’s virago: “Shove that down your fat-ass throat!” What’s not funny: Weird homophobic eruptions, like a flaming queen jumping out of a cake to “It’s Raining Men” as a feuding Jackson says to Yoba, “If you wanna be a bitch, there’s your man.”