I am most assured that if you are reading this Comeback Girl Blog, you have seen Tyler Perry’s ‘Why Did I Get Married’. And if you haven’t, you should be whipped and tied, no flogged. Box office numbers are so important on opening night weekend and this movie has some really impressive numbers. This weekends gross numbers are at 21.5 million with 2011 theaters showing the film.
When Hollywood decided to bring black film to screen in larger numbers, they believed that ‘Friday’, ‘Friday After Next’, ‘Boyz In The Hood’, and other urban genre films were what black people wanted to see. Fast-forward 10-15 years, Hollywood has gotten the message (because great black filmmakers including Perry have proved that other themes were just as interesting to black audiences) that black people are not a monolith. Not all black people live and die in the hood, many have college educations, many become professionals and even those that don’t live pretty good lives, many have middle-class and upper middle-class existences that have their own much needed stories that need to be told.
Jill Scott was the standout actress in this film. And there were some great messages including the rule of 80/20. The notion is that men only get about 80% of what they need in a relationship (as was told in the circle of men friends including Perry’s character). And if a man decides to step out, that 80% that he was once getting turns into 20% with the mistress or other woman. Hmm I wonder if this falls into the notion that most husbands don’t leave their wives. Maybe this rule will float on to those “other women” websites.
