Dear diary, as the film ended, I realized I've wasted two hours of my life. Diary of a Mad Black Woman is a dull, never-ending film.The intent to keep the audience attracted failed since I had to stop, and watch the rest of it in the morning because I was falling asleep.Tyler Perry is not a very talented writer, and the result is a horrifying story. It does show issues within black families, but it doesn't go any further.The idea that a woman would console a man who threw her out of her own house, and left her broke is ridiculous. Also, the way she treated him after the accident makes her a worse person than him.I would like to say the acting was awful, but the actors didn't have much to work with.

Obviously you can tell by my other reviews that I am a huge Tyler Perry fan. So naturally when my family and I heard that he was making a movie in 2005, we got really excited and went to see it in theaters opening weekend. What did I think of it? It was a great film, and it still is! I love movies and TV shows that are just as good, if not better, than the first time you saw it. This movie is just fantastic! Tyler Perry did an absolutely great job updating this story and transposing it over to film. I love seeing Charles at work; it showed more of his human side. When he's not mean and evil of Helena, he's at work being a good lawyer. I like the side story with Brian and Deborah. I love that Orlando isn't rich in this version! I love the message of forgiveness! I just love this movie! It's funny, it's dramatic, it's musical, it's inspiring! I love it! It's one of my favorite movies.So let's talk about why some people don't necessarily like this movie. I read one review on this website in which the writer stated he or she couldn't understand what this movie is supposed to be: is it a romance, a drama, a comedy? Well, it's life. Again, the strength in Tyler Perry's writing is the realism of the story and characters. Life is funny, life is serious. In life we meet our soul mates and experience romance. This movie is just an imitation of life.It's also really good to see Madea on the big screen! A lot of people got excited for this, but this may also be what some people don't like about the film. Some of you might be surprised to learn that a lot of people don't like Madea. ("WHAAAAAT?!? Madea is unliked?! How is that possible?" I know, just hold on.) One reason this might be is because we've never seen a character like Madea in mainstream entertainment before. We've seen the loving grandparent, the wise grandparent, and the unkind grandparent hundreds of times. We've never seen a grandparent like Madea in movies before, and people will always react differently to something new. You'll have your lovers and your haters alike.I think it's interesting because we all know someone like Madea. Whether it's a man or a woman, a grandparent or a friend, we know someone like Madea. So then, why do people have a problem with a character this real? I don't know, and maybe I'll never know or understand. Regardless, however, this movie is absolutely fantastic! I think you'll enjoy it! BOOYIKA!

What a strange little film this is. This film has several parts that most definitely do not fit as a cohesive whole, vacillating wildly from preaching Christian values, to maudlin soap opera, to revenge to cheap sex-and-drug jokes. None of these are done particularly well, all shallow, generic and overdone, but, preposterously, the fact that it's such a Frankenstein's monster of poorly-done styles and that it shifts so frequently makes it far more standable than had it just picked a bad style and ran with it.The film at large is ALL climax. Every single scene, and damn near every single line is either melodramatic exclamation or a punchline that could end every conceivable "MadTV" sketch. Every line is slopping crafted to elicit an outburst from its audience, be it an "Mmhmm!" or an "Amen". This is a film that just wants to please its audience, to the point that it thinks it's appropriate to bookend an emotional discussion about a family member who has descended into the hell of drugs...with a scene of a woman on lithium smoking a joint and throwing herself into the yard to escape imaginary rabbits. It wants to get a reaction from every scene, it wants you to either be crying or laughing at every single moment of the film, tears flowing regardless of the reaction.Plot-wise, the film deals with Helen (Kimberly Elise) who as the film starts, is being put out on the street by her husband of 18 years (Steve Harris) as he reveals that he has children with some skank chica. She goes and becomes reacquainted with pistol-packing granny Medea (Tyler Perry) and the rest of her family, in the meantime falling in love with nice guy Orlando (Shemar Moore). But once her soon-to-be-ex-husband is crippled by a hit, she has to choose how she cares for this man that she still loves but threw her out on her ass.Kimberly Elise does her DAMNEDEST to make a real character out of this, and she's the only character that seems genuinely amazed that she's in this cinematic life, between the shock of the crazy break-up, and the voice-over shock that the guy she's with isn't doing SOMETHING wrong. The rest of the cast doesn't really do much. Shemar Moore has some good chemistry but is mostly the rebound guy, while Steve Harris is TERRIBLE in his delivery, enforcing his character as the cipher Type he is. The rest of the cast is seemingly played by Tyler Perry, including ridiculously over-the-top comic Plot Mechanism Grandma Medea, and his experience on the theater shows through, as it yells every line from every character, seemingly playing to the old ladies in the back of the theatre who are hard of hearing. I'm a bit surprised that Tyler Perry didn't direct, considering music video director Grant shows none of the flourish of music video directors, but none of the surehandedness of someone better. The film is mostly simple point-and-shoot, and Perry could easily have done it, as he apparently did for the sequels and all the other things in the Perry empire.It's a film designed for a specific group of people (middle-class churchgoing black folk), and its three-headed style monster and its basic emotional conceits make it remarkably easy to watch, and each and every scene seems to be either genuinely entertaining in a trashy sort of way, or unintentionally entertaining...in a trashy sort of way. Well, trashy in an upstanding Christian sort of way. In the sort of way that...uh...well...oh, what the hell? {Grade: 5.5/10 (C+/C) / #38 (of 62) of 2005}

Nothing seemed to match in this film. I found myself in the realistic world of a successful couple and then suddenly a madcap, lame version of the ghetto. I found a female lead that was charming and smart, then suddenly she shows no social savvy or wit at all.Continuity is important to a film experience and I was constantly reminded I was watching a film in this one. Sets didn't match, worlds didn't match , and the logic of characters didn't match in the slightest.Two good examples: A woman finds her man with another woman with the inference that he is cheating. She goes home to find her closet and things packed up with a whole new wardrobe to replace it. And she thinks that this is her husband's way of giving a gift to her? No one with any amount of street smarts would believe that all their packed belongings bodes well.The other is simply a character low on money shooting a hole in a the ceiling for no good reason other than getting someone's attention in a moment of banality. I'm guessing Mr. Perry was looking for a laugh, but simply shooting a gun isn't funny. And no transvestite grandma in any walk of life would ever do that.