Can a mid-'70s play consisting of 20 monologues delivered by seven women survive the transition to movie screens in 2010? The short answer: not if it's adapted by Tyler Perry. Giving rein to his worst instincts, the Man behind Madea suffocates Ntozake Shange's Obie-winning For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf with a melodramatic framework, as he consolidates the diverse stories into a Harlem walk-up more suited to an episode of 227. Unfortunately for fans of Shange's "choreopoem," the film version is also much funnier than 227. Even if Janet Jackson weren't part of the ensemble (which features fine work by Kimberly Elise, Kerry Washington, and Phylicia Rashad but not by Whoopi Goldberg or Thandie Newton), Perry's handling of a scene that finds two children dangled from a window would be unintentionally hilarious. He's made what amounts to a tone-deaf musical of women's hardships, one where stereotypes soliloquize rather than sing.
