When you see a title like Divorce in the Black appear underneath a Tyler Perry byline, you assume this is more not-so-clever wordplay that clumsily states the obvious: a woman takes her no-good ex to the cleaners before riding off into the sunset. But this new Amazon Prime feature doesn’t just fail to live up to that billing. It’s easily his worst film to date.
Perry – who, as ever, hordes credit for producing, writing and directing this 132-minute film – sets up the disappointment early, opening at the funeral of a young man for a heavy dose of exposition. Who the man is doesn’t matter as much as him dying while attempting to rob a parishioner who just so happened to be packing heat. In between the deceased being consigned to an afterlife in hell and his ne’er-do-well family dragging the body from the casket and out of the church for a non-judgmental burial, we meet Ava (Think Like a Man’s Meagan Good) and Dallas (American Sniper’s Cory Hardrict), the doomed couple brought that much closer to Splitsville after this scene gets tongues wagging in the tiny rural Georgia town they left long ago for a new start in Atlanta, away from this Hatfields v McCoys-lite drama.
