For Colored Girls Review

Tyler Perry’s films, huge money-spinners though they are, have never enjoyed much success with those beyond their African-American target market. That’s unlikely to change with For Colored Girls, an awkward adaptation by writer-director Perry of Ntozake Shange’s award-winning 1975 play. An exploration of what it means to be a ‘woman of colour’ in modern America, it comprises a series of 20 poems (forced here to serve a more traditional narrative), recited by a cast of nine intertwined characters. Impeccably performed by a stellar cast, it is, nevertheless, the kind of spirituo-Christian feminist tract that, depending on your membership status in the Oprah Book Club, you will find either moving and empowering or insufferably pious guff.