Tyler Perry's A Fall from Grace
A FALL FROM GRACE - NETLFIX
In the war between streaming services to draw in new subscribers, original content has been a major tool in enticing potential customers, especially with well-known directors attached. The past few years have seen NETFLIX enlist the help of directors such as Martin Scorsese, the Coen Brothers and Alfonso Cuarón to keep and grow its base of paying customers as well as bring a sense of prestige and quality to NETFLIX’s public image. Actor-director Tyler Perry looked to join those names with 2020’s A Fall from Grace, but unfortunately, his latest dramatic film falls more in-line with the worst of NETFLIX’s catalogue.
One only has to see the trend of green splatters on Tyler Perry’s Rotten Tomatoes’ directing credits to know that his body of work has not received the best reception, despite good returns at the box office. This is especially evident with his Madea films as well as his steady acting jobs in blockbusters such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows and Oscar nominees such as Vice. A Fall from Grace seemed to be poised as another breakout hit for NETFLIX from a household name director, guaranteed to make waves across the film community. It certainly has made waves, but for the wrong reasons.
The film follows Jasmine Bryant, played by Bresha Webb, a public defender who is tasked with getting a plea deal for Grace Waters (Crystal Fox). Waters is a target of a media circus for murdering her husband Shannon DeLong (Mehcad Brooks). At first, Grace is willing to plea that she is guilty, looking only to get placed in a prison close to her son, Malcom (Walter Fauntleroy), but she opens up about Shannon’s betrayal to Jasmine and Jasmine convinces her to take the case to trial. This may sound like a simple premise for a courtroom drama but Perry did not settle for one genre for his Netflix debut. A Fall from Grace contains both romantic drama and horror/thriller elements. If three wildly different films compressed into one sounds exhausting then it only gets worse from there.
A Fall from Grace is infamous for being shot over the course of only five days. The hasty production, however, shows in the final product with a slew of continuity errors and even an appearance from boom microphones. Going beyond nitpicking, there are various problems with the storytelling and presentation. The cinematography is not very exciting. The camera remains stagnant for most of the film with, at most, three angles for a scene, two of which are usually reserved for shot-reverse-shot conversations. The film is smeared with an ugly, dark blue colour saturation that shows up for so many scenes, from dramatic confrontations to casual conversations. What the colour is supposed to convey emotionally becomes confusing. The writing displays a degree of sloppiness. Characters only express their feelings bluntly without much creativity in how they convey it. There are also many groan-worthy cheesy lines throughout. It’s why the characters feel so unmemorable and why it’s so hard to pinpoint their traits, especially when many of them have such sudden character changes with little to no build-up. The acting does not save the poor writing either and much of the cast falls victim to the idea that screaming the dialogue makes it more powerful. The worst offender of this idea is Mehcad Brooks and his delivery of “ashtray bitch!” which will make any viewer burst out in laughter. The pacing is gruelling with scenes shot so methodically. The middle portion of Grace telling her story of how Shannon betrayed her to Jasmine feels so long that it comes as a shock that there’s still forty-five minutes to go.
It’s the last forty-five minutes where the film really falters and becomes accidentally entertaining. . Jasmine’s trial to defend Grace goes so poorly that it becomes engaging, especially for viewers who may be tired of the formulaic courtroom scenes where the protagonists’ side is able to make a comeback. Jasmine fails miserably, there is no comeback. Her emotional appeals to the judge put her in contempt of the court, and the whole event is done in such a melodramatic tone that it’s hard to see how any viewer cannot at least s at what is unfolding. It only becomes more of a train wreck when a horrific conspiracy comes to light and the film becomes a horror-thriller complete with an awful final fight scene. The whole sequence feels like Perry is trying to ride the coattails of Jordan Peele or M. Night Shyamalan and create a jaw-dropping, genre-bending third act. It only falls on its face, however.
Tyler Perry’s A Fall from Grace will not come as a shock to anyone who does not view Perry’s directorial efforts with much admiration or criticizes NETFLIX’s “quantity over quality” approach to original content. It is another poorly done melodramatic train wreck of a drama that only stands out from the crowd for the name attached to it. With confused character writing, uninteresting technical qualities, sloppy filmmaking and an exhausting story, A Fall from Grace ultimately only offers entertainment to those who get a good laugh out of fascinatingly bad movies. It is on par with the likes of The Room or Trolls 2, and even then, it would be much kinder to just recommend finding the screenshots and videos of the gaffs on social media than sitting through the two-hour runtime.
A FALL FROM GRACE is streaming exclusively on NETFLIX from January 17th 2020
