Review: Acrimony

Who exactly are audiences supposed to root for in Acrimony, writer-producer-director Tyler Perry's overwrought variation on Fatal Attraction? Ostensibly, it should be Melinda Moore, the betrayed wife played with scorching fury by Taraji P. Henson, who shouldn't have to continually rise above such mediocre material. Yet, Perry stacks the deck so much against Lyriq Bent's no-good husband Robert that Melinda becomes more and more a fool and her inevitable hell-hath-no-fury clapback more a sign of psychotic pettiness than empowerment.

It doesn't help that Melinda is drawn as being supremely self-aware of her almost lifelong foolishness. Hindsight may be 20/20 but, as she recounts how severely she was wronged to her court-appointed counsellor, there's no denying that she wilfully blinded herself in the name of love. When she first meets Robert in college (the younger Melinda is played by Ajiona Alexus, who also plays the younger version of Henson's character in Empire, and the younger Robert by Antonio Madison), he seems the perfect guy: handsome, smart and kind. Her older sister, however, senses a con man on the make, though her warnings go unheeded by Melinda even after Robert takes advantage of her fresh grief over her mother's death to convince her to use part of her inheritance to buy him a $25,000 car.

Even after she discovers Robert cheating on her and Melinda ends up rupturing her ovaries when she rams her car in his trailer, she still takes him back, ends up paying for his final two semesters in school, estranges herself from her sisters when she agrees to marry him, works two jobs to keep them afloat after he drains her inheritance, and even mortgages her mother's house just so he can keep working on his dream to sell his self-charging battery to a prestigious company. Eighteen years later, it's more of the same except, after he jeopardises her family's finances for yet another time, Melinda finally decides to divorce him. Except the deadbeat Robert finally hits it big and Melinda is unhinged when she sees his fiancee enjoying the life that should have been hers.

Acrimony could have worked on two levels - one a sharp observation of how a woman's life can be ruined by a different type of marital abuse, the other as a revenge drama - yet Perry fumbles on both counts. There's a clumsiness that pervades Acrimony, whether it be in the disjointed narrative, pedestrian direction or overall cheapness in quality. The one saving grace is Henson, as compelling a presence as ever, but even she has to struggle mightily against the muck.

Acrimony

Directed by: Tyler Perry

Written by: Tyler Perry

Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Ajiona Alexus, Lyriq Bent, Crystle Stewart, Jay Hunter, Jazmyn Simon, Antonio Madison