Movie Review: Mea Culpa

There is, arguably, no filmmaker more obsessed with crowning and simultaneously decrowning the African American woman than Tyler Perry.

The entire over-therapied landscape of Tyler Perry's movies is awash with strong African American women who are independent and holding down top notch jobs and being shot callers in their own lives.

But not so quick. What typically ensues next is that these strong-type women are somehow married to one dead-beat African American man with oedipal issues, and sexually drawn to another bad-boy African American man who just so happens to be walking the wrong side of the straight and narrow line.

This plays out no differently in Tyler Perry's latest offering on Netflix, Mea Culpa. This time around, a high-flying African American female criminal defence lawyer,(check), married to an out-of-job mummy's boy(check) and currently in marriage therapy(check) suddenly takes up the defence of a controversial artist accused of murder and finds herself sexually drawn and eventually capitulates to his flirtations (double check).

The movie makes short order of the usual fare in the typical Tyler Perry movie: high on incongruous absurdities and low on believability.

But this time around, Tyler Perry pushes the boundaries with a hint at an apparent obsession with erotica and goes the full monty with an orgy fest.

Mea Culpa may be a clever play on words on the titular protagonist's name and profession but the movie plays out like Tyler Perry's advance mea culpa for what appears to be a tease of what to expect next from the usual fare of absurdities in his cinematic ouvre: self-indulgent and pointless erotica. 4/10