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I Can Do Bad All By Myself
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 13 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 19 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy
Written by: Tyler Perry
Directed by: Tyler Perry
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 11, 2009
Running Time: minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for mature thematic material involving a sexual assault on a minor, violence, drug references and smoking
Starring Tyler Perry, Taraji P. Henson, Brian White, Hope Olaide Wilson, Adam Rodriguez, Kwesi Nii-Lante Boakye, and Frederick Siglar
When Madea, America’s favorite pistol-packing grandma, catches sixteen-year-old Jennifer and her two younger brothers looting her home, she decides to take matters into her own hands and delivers the young delinquents to the only relative they have: their aunt April. A heavy-drinking nightclub singer who lives off of her married boyfriend Randy, April wants nothing to do with the kids. But her attitude begins to change when Sandino, a handsome Mexican immigrant looking for work, moves into April’s basement room. Making amends for his own troubled past, Sandino challenges April to open her heart. And April soon realizes she must make the biggest choice of her life: between her old ways with Randy and the new possibilities of family, faith…and even true love. (Lionsgate)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
It's probably the impresario's best-made movie yet, his most joyful, and his most moving.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
It’s the best Tyler Perry movie to date - the writer/director/actor/mogul’s most confident and competent mixture of uplifting black middle-class melodrama and low-down comedy.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
A double shot of Saturday-night lowdown chased by a cheery chug of Sunday-morning uplift.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Robert Abele
What works best, though, is that it's practically an R&B/gospel musical.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
With Bad, Perry is savvy enough to let riveting musical numbers by ringers like Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige--along with Henson’s deeply empathetic performance--carry the film’s feverish emotions more than his characteristically ham-fisted screenplay.
Read Full Review >Variety Peter Debruge
Perry's latest emotional roller coaster starts with considerable promise and a high-wattage cast, including Taraji P. Henson and singers Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige, before giving way to melodramatic predictability.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Stephen Farber
Part musical, part love story, part family melodrama, part inspirational treacle, Tyler Perry's latest movie, I Can Do Bad All by Myself is something of an unholy mess. Alternately stupefying and entertaining, the film does benefit from a strong cast.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Neil Genzlinger
Mr. Perry has his moviemaking machine running smoothly, which is to say somewhat predictably.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Perry also spices things up with two of his most reliable fallbacks: music, and Madea. Having packed his cast with singers, he allows them all a moment to shine, with songs that deliver his patented lessons (trust in yourself, trust in others, trust in God).
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
This latest offering continues a trend toward increasingly mature moviemaking from the actor/writer/director.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Cliff Doerksen
Contrived, sentimental, tonally bipolar, and as predictable as clockwork.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Melissa Anderson
Has so many dead moments that singing spots by Gladys Knight, Pastor Marvin Winans and Mary J. Blige simply highlight, rather than alleviate, the inertia.
Read Full Review >Time Out New York Nick Schager
The laughs, meanwhile, are delivered by cross-dressing Perry’s sassy grandma Madea, whose wild threats of violence to children and adults alike are the only things that sporadically lighten up this narratively and grammatically dim redemption pap.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.5 (out of 10) based on 19 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Evelyn gave it a9:
I really enjoyed this movie.....I loved the religious aspect in which Tyler demonstrates that even a woman that's an adulterer can have a change of heart.
Luis G gave it a7:
The message is clear and simple ... laugh, cry and learn another wonderful addition to the perry catalog.
kg m gave it a5:
Give credit to Tyler Perry for not glamorizing drug dealing, criminal activities, selfish actions and the like. Tyler Perry advocates practical Christian and family values. Sure, his positive characters are a little too good, too clean, too upstanding but ya got to find your heroes somewhere.
Natalie C gave it a10:
You know, we just have to appreciate how Tyler Perry continuously drives the messages to us. He used celebrity, song, drama, and The Word to deliver the message. I know that everyone that i have talked to personally that has seen the movie has not stopped talking about it. It is truly his best to date. Keep it real Tyler, keep it real!
Neil B gave it a3:
Its tough for me to overlook some glaring issues with the movie. While I try to support Tyler, its clear that he needs to evolve as a director. The movie quite frankly looks low-budget (with the one predictable set shown of the street over and over again) When the child says "my bed, my bed" it became laughable, when Tyler intermingles the high melodrama the product becomes a sad, predictable overreach dramatic breakdown of Black Lives and Family's. And Now it seems he's leveraging this formula to go all the bank, at our expense.
Anne G gave it a10:
First off, I love Madea...secondly, I believe that Mr. Perry takes everyday situations, flaws that everyone, no matter what color, & spotlights them...he could have had nobodys playing these parts & the message would have still shone through. Great movie!
Chad S. gave it a3:
Six, count 'em, six songs(both religious and secular) are filmed without abridgement in "I Can Do Bad All By Myself", which is unheard of in a narrative film, let alone, most documentaries with musical subjects. For example, all the executed pieces from the Cuban exiles in Wim Wenders' "The Buena Vista Social Club" are truncated, because the preservation of an unbroken performance is normally reserved for concert films. Although Mary J. Blige's take on the title song has the power to move even the most die-hard anglophile, her scintillating performance still doesn't cover up the fact that the narrative arrives at a standstill. (The best of the film's six timeouts.) Even worse, story-wise, she's the wrong singer. It would have made more sense had April(Taraji J. Henson) sung the film's showstopper, since the title "I Can Do Bad All By Myself" alludes to the flaky woman's appalling lack of character, shaky life decisions, and overall bizarre behavior. (As to why Tanya is bad, never makes it to the screen.) This filmmaker knows his audience; he knows his base won't be fazed-out by April's unfounded transformation into a generous spirit after just one visit to the Baptist church. To Henson's credit, the secular moviegoer almost forgets that April blew cigarette smoke in the direction of an asthmatic child. She manages to make her character halfway sympathetic, in spite of her schematic character arc. The breakout star from Craig Brewer's "Hustle and Flow" has to conceal a glaring oversight in the film, which might have been caused in due part from the time constraints brought upon by the narrative-siphoning songs. When the children's grandmother(April's mom) goes missing, neither she nor the orphans, inexplicably, are seen talking to the cops. Nobody goes looking for the old woman.
