If you haven’t watched the movie and would like to, read this review after you have viewed the movie.
I’ve decided to do an in-depth review from a professional and prophetic perspective. I’d like to start by saying this isn’t personal. I’d like to say that I have been in this industry for over 25 years in theater, and film. I have a college degree in theater and fiction writing. I have written and directed several of my own bodies of work, I have dedicated well over 10,000 hours of my life to the creative arts and ministry, and have authored 10 books, so I am an expert in this field. Now that we have gotten that out of the way. Here we go.
If you don’t know anything else about me, know that I am a movie buff and I love discussing, analyzing and reviewing movies and plays, if you look back at my history and have followed my work, I am an equal opportunity movie reviewer. The first thing I would like to point out are the things that I admire about Tyler Perry. I love the fact that Tyler Perry has built the largest movie production studio in America and is the soul owner of it. That blesses me and has given African American artist in this industry something to be proud about. So great job for building Tyler Perry Studio’s. I also love the job opportunities for minority actors who would not otherwise have the same opportunities in Hollywood. I love the location of the Tyler Perry Studio’s and look forward to the time when many other screenplay writers and directors are given the opportunity to film and display their projects at Tyler Perry Studio’s. Some of the films that have already been filmed there he featured on his video when he gave us a tour and had his grand opening. Parts of Black Panther, and parts of The Walking Dead have filmed at his studio, along with the many shows written and directed by Tyler Perry himself.
Genre- Suspense Thriller lets go over to Wikipedia.
"Thriller- Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience.[1] The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. Tension is created by delaying what the audience sees as inevitable, and is built through situations that are menacing or where escape seems impossible.[2]
The cover-up of important information from the viewer, and fight and chase scenes are common methods. Life is typically threatened in a thriller film, such as when the protagonist does not realize that they are entering a dangerous situation. Thriller films' characters conflict with each other or with an outside force, which can sometimes be abstract. The protagonist is usually set against a problem, such as an escape, a mission, or a mystery.[3]
Thriller films are typically hybridized with other genres; hybrids commonly including: action thrillers, adventure thrillers, fantasy and science fiction thrillers. Thriller films also share a close relationship with horror films, both eliciting tension. In plots about crime, thriller films focus less on the criminal or the detective and more on generating suspense. Common themes include, terrorism, political conspiracy, pursuit and romantic triangles leading to murder."
I wanted to give the definition of what a suspense thriller was because I want you all to decide for yourselves if “A Fall From Grace”, made you respond to it as a suspense thriller.
Tyler Perry’s "A Fall From Grace", Review.
Right off the top, I found myself being distracted by some of the easily fixable mistakes throughout the film. I think that those mistakes took away from the performances of the actors. Later on, in this review, I’ll name 10 or so of those issues that I had questions about as a writer, actor and director.
"Having a developed backstory is very important for any script, and when those backstories aren’t developed, those holes show up in the writing."
The characters had the potential to be much stronger than they were had the story stretched a bit further, beyond the screen. The chemistry between Jasmine and her husband was non-existent, so seeing them together made me uncomfortable. The story telling from Grace’s perspective as she sat in jail was pretty good, I really liked how the camera faded into her memory as she told her story but I felt at times the acting was on one plane or one note. I also liked Cicely Tysons character. It seemed like she was using the Animalism acting technique where an actor fuses the traits and characteristics of a certain animal in with their role. She looked like she was portraying the “mouse” animalism. Side bar- be on the lookout for my animalism course in my online school, coming soon. Phylicia Rashād did very well with what she had to work with. I must admit, I did figure out the plot within the first 10 to 15 minutes or so. I knew Sarah was no good. I liked the fact that Grace and Shannon waited until after marriage to sleep together, although he was trying to beforehand. Shannon’s character was displayed really well when it came to how he manipulated Grace into falling in love with him but I didn’t like the switch between Shannon the good guy and Shannon the con-man. Although Tyler may have written it like that on purpose, for films sake, giving the viewing audience clues that he was bad would have made it a bit more exciting. I feel like he took the yelling at the screen away from his audience. (you know how we do when we are watching a bad guy sneak up on the victim.) Also, there is a crime of passion law. I feel like that should have been the first defense or at least mentioned. After Grace caught Shannon in bed with someone else, something in her snapped. She was thrown back into the last experience she had had with her ex-husband.
"Definition of Crime of passion- is a criminal defendant's excuse for lacking the premeditation element of a crime due to sudden anger or heartbreak. The defense is usually raised in murder or attempted murder cases, when a spouse or lover finds his/her partner sexually involved with another and shoots or stabs one or both of the coupled pair. To successfully raise the defense, the defendant must have acted immediately after the provocation, without time to "cool off". If the element of premeditation is eliminated, the charges may be lessened from provable homicide to manslaughter with no death penalty and limited prison terms. The impassioned defendant may even be acquitted. So, based on the definition, and what we saw, Grace hadn’t premeditated beating Shannon to death. The woman he had in her bed had just left and her was clearly not in her right mind." Wikipedia
I also felt Grace’s son could have had a bigger role in getting the lawyer to listen to his mothers’ case, instead of the one scene when he went to visit Jasmine at her office. I didn’t like the fact that every single black male character in the film was either abusive or weak and lacked having a strong voice. Whether they were on screen or talked about. Grace’s son, couldn’t go to bat for his mother, Grace’s ex-husband was a cheater and married his secretary, Jasmine’s boss, played by Tyler Perry, was verbally abusive and talked down to women, and Jasmine’s husband, the police officer, didn’t speak up for his wife in the court room when she was being talked down to, and he got hit on the head with a cast iron skillet by a senior citizen. These images of how Mr. Perry portrays black men leave lasting impressions. This brings me to the next section of my review:
Prophetic Insight-
"Writers will project unresolved trauma through their writing."
There is a pattern of black men always being portrayed as weak or abusive in Tyler Perry films. The black men are always being belittled by strong black females. The black men never have a say.
"So as prophetic scribes, it’s so important to be whole when writing for the masses. It’s a huge responsibility to have a platform that millions of people are watching and when a writer isn’t whole, and hasn’t dealt with broken personal relationships, that brokenness will come through on the pages of your scripts and in your storyline."
Statement: An actor, is only as good as the script given to them. No matter how good an actor is, if a script is sub-par, that’s as far as the actor can go.
Mistakes & Issues
1. In the opening scene, why didn’t the police officer just reach out and grab the old lady on the roof?
2. Second scene as Jasmine and her husband are lying in bed
Jasmine- is that rain?
Husband- yeah it stopped about an hour ago.
The line should have been, “was that rain I heard earlier?
3. Scene 3 when the lawyer was in the car on the way to meet grace for the first time, she was changing the station on her car radio but all the voices were the same.
4. Jail visit scene, this scene grinded my gears. She pointed out that they both were catholic and mentioned the Rosary, but later on they mentioned Grace was a Sunday School Teacher and they had a gospel choir. I went to Catholic School, no Sunday School before mass and the choir was an all-boys choir that sang hymns. So that really quick scene when The Catholic priest was baptizing her with Holy Water, what happened to the rest?
5. Sara asked Jasmine, “What brings you to see me?”
Jasmine answered, "Tears, I saw Ms. Grace cry tears that I’ve never seen a guilty person cry before."
But it had already been established that Jasmine only did plea deals. Was she saying that none of the other people she represented cried?
6. Next part in the house with Sarah when she asked, "do you like coffee", but went to the tea pot. Do people put coffee in their tea pots? That was a prop masters’ job to get a coffee pot. It also looked like the water was clear.
7. Let’s go to the timeline, Grace had been divorced for 7 years according to the script. When she and Sarah were on the coach talking about her ex-husband, they were talking like Sarah knew the husband and the secretary. Sarah said they went to the wedding and he still had up Grace’s old drapes. So, was the con a long con? If so, did Sarah have those women locked up in the basement for years? Why didn’t they lock up Grace after they took her house and money like the rest of the people in the basement? Or where two cons going? Sarah with the older women and Shannon with the middle-aged women?
8. (Sidebar, black women don’t wet their hair in the shower unless they have a hair appointment the next day lol.) ?My mom gave me the house shoes. Grace put her white house shoes on and then, as she was walking down the stairs her, feet were bare.
9. Grace hit Shannon over the head with a baseball bat 11 times. Brain matter was on her and blood was everywhere. But yet he survived? Was Sarah a surgeon? Who stitched him up? Who performed brain surgery? Who put his skull back together? What hospital did he get taken to? Was he an X-Man with regenerating skin? Was he related to Wolverine? Why did he have hair wrapping paper wrapped around his head as a bandage? How did he not have brain damage? How was he still taking folks? I got a few questions.
There is a continuity person, who’s sole job is to walk around with a polaroid camera and snap pictures of sets and actors so when a scene has to be continued, everything can still look the same. This person will catch all of the small details that a director or actor may miss because they are being creative in other areas.
Hollywood:
Hollywood has its problems, but Hollywood is professional and studies its craft. Hollywood ignoring Tyler Perry has nothing to do with race and everything to do with how Hollywood feels like Tyler Perry disrespects the craft of film making. The reason the award shows have and will continue to snub actors who work for Tyler Perry is because they don’t respect the scripts he has written and refuse to reward subpar writing. What do I mean? It’s easy to throw together films when you have the capital to back the films, but it takes training to catch the little things. And until the craft, the art of film making is respected, no matter how rich someone is, the work won’t be taken seriously. Tyler Perry has capitalized off of ignorance of his audience. An example would be a really good singer who has never taken vocal lessons. To an untrained ear the singer sounds perfect and wonderful, but to a trained ear, there are major problems with the phrasing of the words, the breath control is all over the place, there are moments of sharpness and singing flat, diction is weak, the timing isn’t right, but to an untrained ear... "I’ll let that slide because she or he sounds so good. She was a little off right there but that’s okay." The singer never practiced, and got on stage and said, “I didn’t even warm up. I have never taken a vocal lesson in my life.” Those of us with a trained ear would say, "yeah, I can tell".
I am a fan of intentionally bad movies, an example would be the "Sharknado" franchise. With celebrity cameos and really bad acting as sharks find a way to kill and eat people as the ride the sandstorms and tornados, all while out of the water.
What have I learned from this movie?
I’ve learned its okay to take your time and make it right. We are living in a generation that doesn’t like to be corrected or challenged. Correction isn’t tearing down it’s the opposite. When you don’t know something or how to do something, you get with someone who does. You don’t brag about not knowing something and then produce out of that ignorance, without having the posture of wanting to get better and grow. I may not have a writers’ room, but I have a college degree in writing, I’m a trained writer and I always allow trusted colleagues to read my work and give honest feedback and suggestions.
I’m also a bit disappointed at all of these filmmakers who are taking up for and making excuses for sub-par work. You can be proud that Tyler Perry built his studio without agreeing with the areas of growth opportunities that he has in his films. But saying it’s okay to keep giving his followers subpar work, because he has money and fans who like it, is a copout for professional people. You say you love Tyler Perry, tell the truth then. Stop being "yes" men because you feel like one day you will work for him, so you don't want to tell the truth. No matter how rich someone becomes, there will always be room for improvement.
I would have given “A Fall from Grace” 3 out of 4 stars, but because of all of the lazy mistakes in the film, I couldn’t in good conscious, so I give it 2 1/2 stars.
In closing, as scribal prophets and prophetic scribes, we need to uphold a standard in our area of expertise that the Lord has given us to walk in or be gatekeepers of. If we don’t teach those who do not know the difference, how will those who come after us operate in the spirit of excellence? Remember, we ought to study to show ourselves approved.
"Doing something in excellence and having professional integrity can also be used as a witness."
It’s the difference between eating Ramon noodles or steak, potatoes and asparagus. Just because Ramon Noodles are all you know, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be offered the better meal. My name is L.A. Holts and this review has been brought to you by my online school of Prophetic Directing for Stage & Film. (propheticdirecting.com) Please go check it out.
Leave a comment. God Bless!
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