NOBODY’S FOOL: The Flips Side Of “Pretty Woman” Is A Huge Mistake

What do we expect going into a film by Tyler Perry? Certainly not poetry. Nonetheless, and thankfully none-the-more, the director summons images that really make you think…”why the hell did I pay for a ticket to see this?” The truth is, his life lesson material has always been compromised by his materialistic sensibilities. The sensible, if not venerable, Tyler Perry Studio Formula is to take an alluring middle age farrago, see how far they can venture down the wrong path with the wrong partner, and then eventually find Mr. or Ms. Perfect, even if they aren’t the archetypal gentry that, by today’s standards, checks all the marks on the list.

It’s a romantic comedy blueprint that usually works like gangbusters. By turns, the fluttery hero of Nobody’s Fool never learns her lesson. And coincidentally, neither has Perry, who has been known to have a penchant for phony, phone-it-in sermons centering the issue of career verse relationship, with protagonists that revel in pomposity to the point of monstrosity. So you will find it odd that this film has its audience marvel at the upscale trappings while telling us that all that glitters is not gold.

Fool’s Gold

Equally luminous is Danica (Tika Sumpter), the pretty woman in this Pretty Woman flip-flop. A class conscious New York advertising exec. who makes “six figures”, while living in a luxe Manhattan penthouse that would feel topless if her ego wasn’t already in the clouds. With a presumably “perfect” man who she met online, a dutiful friend in Kalli (Amber Riley), and a view of a lambent CGI Manhattan that is hellbent on adding another layer of fakes to to the ordeal; she is living her best life. Or so she thinks.

Watching Tiffany Haddish arrive is like watching an earthquake making headway. Brace yourselves for a jolting motormouth with a knack for shaking things up to rhapsodical extremes. She plays Danica’s sister Tanya. Bringing a peculiar type of prowess, Haddish’s brand of comedy seems effortless in the sense that the audience never feels as if they are watching a performance. Her puerile farce isn’t pure in wit, but there’s a flammable energy to her juvenile chaos of enunciated syllables and bawdy gestures that makes her no-filter, one-liners feel well earned.

We first see her being picked up from prison. Where she then enters the chic penthouse, only to be wowed that her sister “didn’t have to give up no ass” to purchase it. But something still doesn’t seem right. And Tanya is just the cut-throat personality to voice her concern about Danica’s boyfriend she hasn’t even seen yet due to “wifi issues”. Which is where I lost connection with the story.

It can be harrowing to spend two hours watching Danica lose scent of the swashbuckling barista (Omari Hardwick) whose soft smiles and chiseled features go unnoticed on daily trips to the coffee shop. If the prickly roses he sends for her doesn’t do it for you, the actors last name should clarify his fiery intentions. It isn’t really a spoiler to say the two begin to hit it off (a couple sex scenes make Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie’s escapade in Don’t Look Now watchable). But not before Tanya appoints “MTV Catfish” to get to the bottom of this ambiguous voice on the other end of her sisters phone.

Nobody’s Fool: Conclusion

The films greatest pleasure is picking up on Tanya and Danica’s clashing psyches. And with an unusual R-rating, the limitless warfare of sister rigidity proves to be a genuine microcosm of the love that stems from the singular friend and enemy you can’t live without. It’s a juggling act Perry somehow pulls off – sister “baby mama drama” is hard to nail – but there is no unity in his balancing of genres.

Ambivalent styles range from self-aware midnight raunchiness, to a message picture about the quicksand that is quixotic relationships, to a send-up of lighthearted mid-2000’s rom-coms, to everything in between. This playing with genre proves to be nothing new for Perry fans and critics – who by now are familiar with this kind of brimming c*cktail of undeserved ideas. Having now directed 19 movies in 12 years, it would be nice to see the director spend more time on his filmmaking, in contrast to his making of movies.

Thanks to a wonderful ensemble, Nobody’s Fool is a step in the right direction. Even if that is like preferring lethal injection to being hanged. Which is a shame, really, since a comedy with Tiffany Haddish, Tika Sumpter, and Whoopi Goldberg makes for a nice mental picture, but once the movie actually starts, you begin to realize that you, and the hero, have been cat-fished.

Have you seen Nobody’s Fool? Are you a fan of director Tyler Perry? Let us know in the comments below!

Nobody’s Fool released in theaters in the US on November 2, 2018 and the UK on November 23, 2018. For all international release dates, see here.