NOBODY'S FOOL

US, 2018, 110 minutes, Colour.
Tiffany Haddish, Tika Sumpter, Omari Hardwick, Amber Riley, Whoopi Goldberg, Missy Pyle, Chris Rock.
Directed by Tyler Perry

Tyler Perry has quite a strong reputation in producing and directing films especially for an African-American? audience. He also often acts in his own films as well as in other films, even taking on the role of James Patterson’s Alex Cross.

However, this film was not successful in reaching his target audience. In fact, it is rather difficult to sit through.

The film gives top billing to Tiffany Haddish, the stand-up comedian who emerged in such feature films as Girls Night, Night School. In this film, she plays a rather overbearing character and plays it overbearingly, just out of prison after five years, avoiding meeting with her mother, Whoopi Goldberg, going to live with her fashionable sister, a successful advertising executive. She is played rather glamorously by Tika Sumpter.

Also in the act is a reformed alcoholic and addict, Omari Hardwick, who runs a coffee bar, offering complimentary drinks to the executive. Tiffany Haddish comes on strongly and gets a job, interfering with her sister’s life, interfering with the manager’s life. They have a one night stand with consequences for an up-and-down relationship which, we know, will end satisfactorily.

The main complication is that the executive is in a phone relationship with the ideal man – ‘n investigating group establishes that she has been “catfished� (which includes a cameo by Chris Rock) and the man doesn’t exist. However, he does turn up and there are complications with the bar owner.

One of the pleasures of the film is seeing Whoopi Goldberg again doing a sassy turn as the women’s mother.

Not the best of Tyler Perry’s films.