For Colored Girls

Whenever my editor assigns me to see a Tyler Perry film, I react as does the prisoner of a warlord in The Kentucky Fried Movie sketch “A Fistful of Yen,” when he is sent to Detroit as a form of torture: I kick; I cry; I scream; and I pray for death … but I always say yes, because, damn it, I need the money. For Colored Girls, about the intersecting lives of several African-American women in New York, is a despicable, depressing, frightening waste of time. Seemingly every horrifying thing a person can think of—from rape and back-alley abortions to child murder—is thrown into this movie for the shock value, without any real substance. It is a dirty, foul movie, the likes of which I hope I never have to see again.