Belt, sash, girdle, crown, ring—the movie poster is mesmerizing, with two enormous wedding bands encircling, on one side, the four men, and on the other the women. This bling must be generous, given that these cock-diesel dudes could effectively man a professional offensive line. In the first act’s Bahamas trip, they sit around on jet skis with their chests bare, processing their feelings and flexing. Black aspirational Rohmer on the down low? But director Tyler Perry is Welles, Hitchcock, Polanski. In the scene at the airport, his wife brings him a coffee and for a moment, apropos of nothing, he quizzically regards its vessel, that ultimate new American icon everyone knows—the tall, slender, plastic-lidded paper coffee cup. As if to ask, Does this thing belong to everybody? Is that a reason to want it?
Stricture. Hotlanta. The welter of union, by the end, erupts. Janet Jackson is a therapist who writes about grief, and we understand it’s the loss of her real brother that leads her to take out every piece of glass in her ultra-modern house with a golf club. An homage, it’s pretty clear, to the video for “Black or White,” where Michael creams a car (and storefront), grabs his crotch, hoots and growls, a neon sign explodes and then he turns into a jaguar. Earlier, Macaulay Culkin freestyles the bridge. People’s faces morph into other race’s people’s faces. The man surveyed it all: father, brother, child, monkey, skeleton, mask. Was he Ariel or Caliban? And what does that make Quincy Jones?
He trailed pain like a pestilence, but I can’t begrudge him his peace. Mr. Bones: I feel you—now play the song.
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