Kyle's Movie Guide: "Diary of a Mad Black Woman"

Oftentimes I wish I could combine movies. What I mean is this, while watching a chick-flick, I wish some gratuitous violence would be thrown in.

An action movie frequently incorporates humor to help the flow. One of the most effective mergers of genre is the dramedy: the dramatic-comedy - or the comedic drama, whatever your tastes may be. These work best when the humor effectively acts as a foil to dramatic events unfolding in the plot. This week's campus movie is "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" which attempts, yet fails to accomplish, this goal. It seems that two different movies exist here.

The opening shows a seemingly happily married couple. The two started with nothing and have risen to a high-class lifestyle. One night, the husband reveals that he has been cheating on his wife and kicks the wife out while he moves his mistress in. The girl meets another man and a romance forms. This is half of the movie - the dramatic story of a woman, left with nothing to show from eighteen years of marriage, who is starting life over with a new job and a new love.

However, there is another part of the movie, which is equally entertaining yet distracts from the first story. This is where Mable "Madea" Simmons comes in (no relation to Menno). Grandma Madea is really actor Tyler Perry dressed in drag; Perry also wrote this movie and a series of plays on which this film is based. There is actually somewhat of a cult following attached to the movies in this series. Madea is a pot-smoking, gun-toting, no-nonsense grandmother figure. She serves as the comic relief for a storyline that didn't really need it; however, she is good for some serious laughter.

"Diary of a Mad Black Woman" is rated PG-13 for drug content, thematic elements, crude sexual references and some violence. Those who like this movie will enjoy the plays, especially "Madea's Class Reunion" and "I Can Do Bad All by Myself," all of which are available on DVD.

The CAC will be showing "Diary" in SC106 on Friday at 10 p.m. and on Saturday at 9 p.m