Tyler Perry and the Failed Film Language of a Good Scene in 'Nobody's Fool'

Well, time to do that thing that everyone tells me I am not supposed to do and think about and film language. Even though I am film critic and my job calls upon me to think about movies in a way that most don't, one thing that I am told, when I am not being told how much I "hate movies" is that I think about movies too much.

I get it, most people just want to go to the movies, turn off their brains and be mildly amused for 90 to 100 minutes. That makes sense to me, it really does and I sympathize with that, the world can be a tough place sometimes and relaxation is a necessity. But your need to not think doesn't mean I need to not think. You can choose to not read.

Today, I am going to think, postulate, and propose ideas regarding director Tyler Perry and his failed approach to the crafting of the ending of his new movie Nobody's Fool. I am not a fan of this movie. Nobody's Fool fails to create strong characters, narrative momentum and, at times, eschews genuine coherence in its pursuit of turning Tiffany Haddish into Madea minus the genitalia.

But that's for my actual, full length review of the movie. What we are going to talk about is the remarkable failure of the ending of Nobody's Fool. To get there, I must set the scene, as best I can with this incoherent nightmare of a story. The basic premise finds Tika Sumpter as Danika falling in love with Frank, played by Omari Hardwicke.

Unfortunately, Danika is also in love with her long time, long distance boyfriend Charlie whom she has never met in person and whom Danika's sister, Tanya (Tiffany Haddish) doesn't believe exists. Tanya even goes as far as to bring in the guys from MTV's Catfish to find Charlie but that subplot is wildly awful and not pertinent to our discussion.

The bottom line, as we set up the ending is this, Danika has fully fallen for Frank after having finally met Charlie in person and found him to not be the man she thought he was from their year's worth of phone conversations and I love you's. Now, she's traveled to Frank's cabin in the woods to say she's sorry and lay her heart on the line.

When Frank still refuses to speak to her, Danika resorts to the hack screenwriter playbook and rips off Say Anything. Instead of Peter Gabriel and a boombox, Danika uses her car radio and Boyz II Men's classic song, "End of the Road," which she begins to sing along with just as it begins to rain, pouring down as if it were on cue to help Frank come around.

Against all odds and good taste, Tika Sumpter actually makes this moment work a little bit. There is true joy in the way she bares herself in this moment. She's giggly and a little embarrassed but she means every damn moment of this with the song providing all too perfect Greek chorus for her, saying all things she needed to say to Frank from "I'm sorry" to "can we take things back to the way they used to be," when she and Frank were falling in love. It's genuinely heartfelt.

So what's wrong with this moment? Well, for all of Danika's performative emotional output, Frank doesn't see any of it. Tyler Perry completely botches the film language. Yes, despite Tika Sumpter's genuinely lovely emoting and her charming performance both in pantomiming the song and meaning every word, it doesn't matter because Frank can't see her.

Let me set the stage in words, Frank is seated in an easy chair well inside his cabin which is raised off the ground and has porch on the front with a small flight of stairs. Danika is parked in front of the cabin and that is where she performs her Boyz II Men sketch, in front of the car. The edit cuts between Frank listening to the song, though it seems unlikely he actually can hear much of it, but he can't see the thing that is supposed to be winning his heart.

The edit attempts to convince us in this moment that Frank is aware of what's happening. The cuts go from Danika's all out performance to Frank in his chair, his head turned straining to hear, cut back to Danika being charming, then back to Frank, still in his chair, this will happen several more times. Finally, the sound of thunder and a rainstorm and finally Frank is compelled to stand and go to the door and bring Danika inside for the happy ending. He didn't see any of it, so it's as if Boyz II Men and not Danika won the day, undermining Tika Sumpter's incredible work here.

Now, you're saying to yourself, "Oh come on, suspend disbelief, you get what he is going for." Your right fictional strawman, you're absolutely right. But so am I. This scene is well implied, the emotion is well implied to the point that Tika Sumpter is genuinely moving me, as is Boyz II Men, but the scene is so lazily and badly crafted by the director that I couldn't get the full effect.

Imagine how much stronger the film would be if Perry had simply had Frank stand and walk to the door, ready to tell Danika to leave. Then he sees what she's doing and stops himself and she goes on to flagellate herself as she does to Boyz II Men and the rain starts and he finally is won over. It's a very simple change, it fixes and entirely unnecessary issue with a minor change in perspective. Just fix the visual language and the scene, if not the movie, actually works.

The laziness, the carelessness, of not making sure that your character can see the thing that is supposed to be the most important moment of the movie is a hallmark of every minute of Nobody's Fool. It's the perfect encapsulation of why the movie as a whole doesn't work. It's so needlessly careless. Stand him up, walk him to the door.

Instead, a genuinely good scene, a rarity in this movie, is ruined by carelessness, Tyler Perry's insulting lack of care for how the mechanics of visual filmmaking works, that's what I came away with. Not Tika Sumpter's lovely moment, but Tyler Perry's lazy, blissfully ignorant approach to even the simplest, most basic aspects of filmmaking.

The power of the moment, though unearned by all that came before it, is undermined by the simplest, laziest thing possible, a director who doesn't care enough about the basic mechanics of how his chose milieu, film actually works. Without basic film language, perspectives, space, etc, even the best moment is robbed of its power.