(Movie Review) Good Deeds

There are some things that you never expect to see. Diet food that is made completely out of chocolate, a low calorie beer that doesn’t taste like old dish water, and that  Snooki went to MIT are just a few examples of things that I wouldn’t expect the ever see or say. Something else that could be added to that list is that I would ever like a Tyler Perry movie. As I have said in the past, I have tremendous respect for him as a “brand”, but I also think that Perry does a lot of harm to his own community by making movies that not only reinforce negative racial stereotypes, but he also manages to glorify them in some cases. So, my track record with liking his movies has not been favorable. Needless to say I was shocked with how much I liked this recent movie and enjoyed it from start to finish.

Storyline: Wesley Deeds (Perry) is a business man that has been running an electronics empire that his father worked his whole life to build. Weighed down by his brother, Walter (White), an overbearing mother (Rashad) and a distant fiancé (Union), Wesley feels like his life is on autopilot. When he befriends a cleaning lady in the building named Lindsey (Newton), who is having a rough time in life while trying to provide for her daughter, he begins to see his life in a new perspective. Will the people in his life support his changes or will they try to keep him down as they have in the past?

If I had one complaint about this movie it would be that the life of Lindsey Wakefield falls apart all at the same time a little too conveniently. Sure, it is possible that someone’s life falls into utter chaos all at once, but the likelihood of all of these events that go wrong happening within a day or so of each other is completely illogical. Other than that, I really have no complaints about this movie at all!

Worth the admission? I can’t believe that I am saying this, but YES. Newton, Perry and Rashad turn in wonderful performances and the rest of the cast is very good as well. I think that it is nice to see that Perry actually has some acting chops and doesn’t have to rely on a “fat suit” and wig to make a movie.

Note: Even though this is one of the better movies that I have seen from Perry, I expect it to perform much worse than his usual films. The movie doesn’t have the normal outrageous characters that will appease his mass audience and many people, like me, find his films/tv shows so off-putting that they will avoid this at the box office. What a shame. This film actually deserves some praise.

Let me know what you thought of it