I’m a little worried we may have ruined Armond White.  Ever since we started having fun with him, the venerable thesaurificent troll from the New York Press has become increasingly reasonable.  I always enjoyed reading him far more than your average fanboy or Pete Hammond-esque studio shill, but lately I find myself actually agreeing with him.  For most of his 1300-word review of Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls, White is downright conversational.  But Armond being Armond, he had to slip into Armond-ese at some point, and when he did… it was awesome.  It almost makes the waiting seem worthwhile, like waiting for a brief show of affection from your cold and distant father.

Trouble began with Perry’s title, which is truncated from the original For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. Although it’s a dedication, it also segregates. This seems retrograde in the “post-racial” Obama era, conveniently harkening to the 1970s when the cultural mainstream embraced a radical chic fondness for black exclusivity that was also accusatory: It asserted a curious, exotic defiance. Today’s perverse radical chic too-readily embraces black pathology.

BOOM! DON’T MAKE ME GET MULTI-SYLLABICAL IN HERE, MOTHERF*CKERS!  So that was dense and professorial, but broken into plain English, not altogether unreasonable. Borderline insightful, even. That won’t do, Armond. TELL US WHY WE’RE SHEEP!  WE NEED AN UNSUPPORTABLE OPINION ABOUT A FORGOTTEN CLASSIC THAT CHAFES AGAINST THE VAUDVILLIAN, COMPUTO-FASCIST MILIEU!

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Megamind opened big, Due Date had the highest-grossing opening ever for an R-rated comedy*, and all was well in Hollywood, as overall business was up 30% from last year.  But in my mind, the big story is that Tyler Perry’s adaptation of For Colored Girls grossed $20.1 million, which is comparable to the opening of freakin’ Knight and Day.  For reference, here is an abbreviated list of movies that opened smaller than For Colored Girls this year:

Wall Street 2
Legend of the Guardians
Easy A
Machete
Piranha 3D
The Switch
Scott Pilgrim
Step Up 3D
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Get Him to the Greek
Marmaduke
Kick-Ass
Hot Tub Time Machine
Green Zone
She’s Out of My League…

I know some of you are probably thinking I’m naive for being surprised at the success of a Tyler Perry movie, when he’s clearly become the closest thing we have to a male Oprah, but keep in mind, For Colored Girls was A TWO-HOUR SLAM POEM ABOUT RAPE AND ABORTION.  I’m not sure I’d see that even if every part was being played by Diora Baird’s boobs.

(full top 10 chart below)

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Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls (based on the play ‘For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf’) opens today. While there isn’t enough white guilt in the world to make me want to see a two-hour extended slam poem about rape and abortion, that doesn’t mean we can’t still have a little fun with it. Here at FilmDrunk, there’s this game we like to play where we take a movie we probably aren’t going to see (like this one), and try to recreate the plot using only expository quotes (no analysis!) from the reviews.

Are you ready?  Set phasers to ‘Daddy Issues.’

The play was 20 narrative poems (a collective “choreopoem”) declaimed by seven actresses, each of them assigned a rainbow colour.  Admirer Tyler Perry sensibly provides the structure of a Harlem tenement house. (TheStar)

Perry adds a few more characters, notably male ones, and he handles the play’s poetry like the slams of the 1990s, allowing figures to simply throw down rhymes as the mood strikes and the narrative allows. (TheStar)

Thandie Newton is Tangie, a sexually aggressive, emotionally unsatisfied cocktail waitress who uses promiscuity as a drug to ward off pain. She lives next door, in an old apartment building, to Phylicia Rashad’s Gilda, (SF Chron/AV Club)

…a neighbor whose nosiness is revealed to be compassion, Philadelphia Inquirer

…and across the hall from Crystal, who has the biggest cross to bear. Her lover, a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress and alcoholism, is a danger to her and her two kids. (SF Chronicle)

Tangie, in turn, lives above her mother, a hoarder, cult member, and mother to a bright, college-bound girl who isn’t sure what to do about her unplanned pregnancy. (AV Club)

Nyla’s dance teacher is introduced as annoyingly chipper and then brutally abused before our eyes. (Time)

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Here we have the first trailer for Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls, his adaptation of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.  I was a little curious as to what a film adaptation of this would look like, considering the original is awesomely melodramatic 70s faux-artsy word babble diarrhea without much story.  According the Wikipedia entry, it’s actually called a “choreopoem.”  Oh hello there, Dismissive Wank.  Sit sit, we have much to discuss.  It turns out, you just add some music and footage of folks strugglin’.  Some lines from the trailer:

“Another song with no singers, lyrics, no voice, unseen performances.”

“Ordinary, brown braided woman with big legs and full lips, become yourself!”

“Say you’re sorry.  I got sorry greetin’ me at the front door.  You can keep yours.”

“I got a real… dead lovin here for you now.”

“Being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven’t conquered yet.”

My feelings about this were very complex, very emotional. I felt squelched by traditional blog format, so I just wrote what I felt.  I call it a hypno-limerick.   Turgid.  Turgid hobo penis, effeminate testicles pregnant with duality, the elephants trampling his pigeon biscuit.  Untouched, unloved, unwanked. O great glistening loins, the alphabet, my grandmother’s labia, the flaccid penguins CHOKE on turds of misery. Crying glaciers! A wet nap!  Gossamer wings queef SILENT in the autumn discharge.  Lo but for tho, hobo, Joe Blow throws snow in the dojo at the whiskey a Go Go. (*farts Black Eyed Peas song into a trumpet*) (*throws glitter on audience*)

Thank you.  I consider this an important work.

Former NFL wide receiver Isaiah Mustafa, aka the Old Spice guy, is everywhere lately.  He’s been riding a pop-culture buzz that’s practically Betty Whitian, though far less obnoxious (“haha get it? It’s funny because she’s old.”  F*ck you.). Hollywood Reporter recently got the low down on some of Mustafa’s upcoming projects, and I thought I’d share.  As a wise man once said, “I ain’t allergic to page views, son.”

The long and short of it is, you’re probably going to see him everywhere for a while like Danny McBride or Ken Jeong.  How well he does in the bit parts will determine whether he sticks around.

• He plays a cop in Horrible Bosses, “because I play these authoritative characters well.”  He’ll co-star opposite Jennifer Aniston and Colin Farrell (who play the bosses), and Jason Bateman, and Charlie Day from It’s Always Sunny (who play the guys plotting to kill their bosses).  It’s set to be directed by Seth Gordon (hopefully the Seth Gordon who directed King of Kong and not the Seth Gordon who directed Four Christmases).  My favorite part is that Jamie Foxx is set to play a con artist named “Motherf*cker Jones.”  Yes, Brett Ratner is listed as a producer on the project, but I’m assuming that that just means he shows up a couple times a week to stand around craft services with his hands down his pants and leaves with his mouth covered in sugar cookie.

• He’ll have an unspecified role in Tyler Perry’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” based on a play that Perry himself describes as “a bunch of poems with no real story.”  I think I’d rather have my nuts torn apart by jaguars or go to one of those Grease sing-along theaters than see this movie, but if Michael Jai White can do Tyler Perry movies and get away with it, maybe the Old Spice guy can to.  Of course, keep in mind, Michael Jai White knows karate.

• He’s doing a guest spot on Chuck, which he says was his “first choice.”  I don’t know what Chuck is, but I always hear dorks whispering about it between inhaler puffs.

THR: You also landed a talent agreement last month with NBC. What does that mean, and what shows are you filming?
Mustafa: It means I’m exclusively working with NBC unless they approve other projects. I’m going to be filming an episode of “Chuck” next week. I don’t know how many episodes yet, but I do know I’m playing an official CIA guy (named Greta). The character is pretty goofy, so it’s going to be fun.

Haha, get it?  “Greta” is a girl’s name.  For white people.  Anyway, I wish him luck.  His commercials are great, and we need all the non-fruity Disney Channel asswipes we can get.  Perhaps most impressive, Morgan Freeman is playing him in a new meme:

[meme via GammaSquad]