Tyler Perry's Good Deeds

Well, I'll be goddamned: Tyler Perry finally made a decent movie. In Good Deeds, Perry stars as Wesley Deeds, a seemingly mild-mannered dope who has a beautiful fiancée, Natalie (Gabrielle Union), and a great job running the company started by his deceased father. His life, by all accounts, is perfect, but he merely goes through the motions. This life of monotonous privilege is shaken up after he meets widowed-mother Lindsey (Thandie Newton). She is angry at the world, but she and Deeds strike up an unlikely friendship. After Wesley finds out about her homelessness and sees the pain and suffering she goes through while trying to make a decent life for her daughter, he decides to help her. While the story is by-the-book, the acting by Perry and Newton is good enough to keep the film from sinking. The gorgeous San Francisco setting certainly helps things, and the movie looks amazing, as captured by cinematographer Alexander Gruszynski. Now, Perry needs to make sure he continues to keep that damn Madea out of his films.