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Why Did I Get Married?
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Lions Gate Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (20th June 2011). |
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The Film
 After two years and two incredibly successful movies Tyler Perry has seen his budget increase and his films keep grossing money. Jokes have been made about Perry’s wild popularity in the black community but the truth is that he’s one of the few major black filmmakers in Hollywood. The fact that presents mainstream films to a predominantly black audience while keeping his messages and values fairly conservative, traditional and Christian ensures Perry aims for the broadest black demographic possible and draws in audiences. While his first two mostly dipped into the same reservoir of plots and characters, Perry makes a move away from his Madea and Joe characters. “Why Did I Get Married” (2007) is still based on one of Perry’s plays, but is far more adventurous in it’s filming, shits the plot dynamics, slightly, and is one of his more intriguing ventures. In a more straightforward romantic comedy, in “Why Did I Get Married” four couples go on their annual retreat coordinated by psychology professor and author Patricia (Janet Jackson) to talk about their relationships as couples and answer the titular question ‘why did I get married?’ This year the relationships are ready to erupt into conflict. Patricia and Gavin (Malik Yoba) are dealing with the loss of their son, Shelia (Jill Scott) seems to be ignoring her husband cheating on her, Angela (Tasha Smith) and Marcus (Michael Jai White) constantly argue and can’t seem to agree, and Dianne (Sharon Leaf) and Terry (Tyler Perry) can’t seem to agree on the future of their family. At their Colorado mountain retreat the couples problems are all brought to the table and secrets are revealed that break up Shelia’s marriage and threaten the relationships of the other women. Without Madea and Joe to rely on Perry gets more into the relational drama and still has an abuse plotline as central to the overall arc of the story, continuing the bald-headed dark-skinned male villain. All problems that Perry doesn’t seem to want to shift on, though this time around he focuses on emotional abuse in relationships and the villain is far more repentant, even if presented as unredeemable. There are no issues of people leaving their community or roots, even though all the central characters are middle-aged black professionals. Instead they are all graduates of an unnamed historically black college, almost like “A Different World” (1987-1993) all grown up. I’d rather watch a reunion of “A Different World” in a heartbeat since it went into larger class, race, gender and structural issues as a part of relational drama, rather than just the relationships, abuse and Christianity that Perry seems mired in. The characters that he develops here are fairly well realized, though attached to their own specific relationships. The gender roles that Perry presents in the relationships, even though all are professional workers, keep the women in the kitchen while the men have guy talk with drinks on the porch or in the background at the retreat. (Unless they’re very stereotypically flamboyant gay white men on the train, who are also racist and play with their pet dog). Perry has a better ability to move from locations and scenes as the majority of the movie takes place after the retreat, building to a final scene at Patricia’s award ceremony. It’s nice in allowing for some more time in character development, giving Michael Jai White and Tasha Smith more time to shine and bring some good comedy and drama to the film. However as good as they are as actors and as an acting couple, Perry, Janet Jackson and Sharon Leaf all fall fairly flat in their roles. As a director Perry is expanding his range, not every scene feels like it was set on a stage and the coverage is better. He even mixes in a few good tracking shots and distance looks for the travelling emphasis, but his directing is still fairly plain. Sure it is a romantic comedy and doesn’t need much more, but worth noting that as a director Perry still has room to grow. Overall it is Perry’s boldest effort, just considering that he decided to move (temporarily) from the Madea money and try and bank on his own name to prove himself as a brand. Point made, Tyler Perry makes incredible amounts of money from a film that is in fairly generic to a couples film, with a few excursions into what could be interesting characters with Shelia and Marcus but never quite get there.
Video
Presented in 1080p with AVC MPEG-4 encoding in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio the film keeps the same clarity as other Perry movies and has bright colors that seem to contrast fairly well. It’s a crisp looking transfer that features good tones and doesn’t get grainy in the dark. However this may be due to the lighting schemes that have every indoor shot lit like a stage rather than a home. Overall, a nice transfer keeps the movie looking good even if it isn’t a great film.
Audio
Likewise, the English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track mixed at 48kHz/24-bit brings clean sound that balances the dialogue and the incidental noises with Perry’s musical compositions to round out the film. At times the dialogue can be a little quiet, due to the large amount of whispering and upset utterances that occur in the film. However turning up your volume to hear won’t blow out your speakers with the musical tracks that can come on or the shouting matches that can break out. It’s a well put together audio track to show the nice standards of quality that Lionsgate tends to keep in touch with. There’s also Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 surround audio, as well as English, English for the hearing impaired and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
Suprisingly there’s no Perry audio commentary track on the film, instead there are just 7 featurettes and some bonus trailers. First up is “Janet Jackson: Return of an Icon” featurette runs for 6 minutes and 38 seconds, mostly speaking with Perry and Jackson working her back into the acting world, with the usual mutual complements. They of course also speak to the character and mix in some behind-the-scenes footage and clips of the film. It’s not a terrible featurette, just incredibly plain. Unfortunately Perry never mentions whether or not he pulled out his Michael Jackson impersonation around Janet. Shame. “Reflections on Getting ‘Married’” runs for 7 minutes. This featurette speaks with each of the actors and producer Ruben Cannon about the mentality of married couples and the why did I get married question that drives the film. It’s a mixture of personal perspectives and insights on the film. There’s no behind-the-scenes footage, instead proselytizing the message of the film. “The Music of ‘Married’” runs for 8 minutes and 35 seconds. This is the most behind-the-scenes of the featurette speaking with composer Aaron Zigman and looking at the orchestral recording of the film’s score. It’s interesting to see Zigman’s process and method for putting together a score for a film that doesn’t feature a lot of orchestra, Zigman estimates only 25 minutes of score. The closeups on the sheet music don’t even feature song titles but just name and letter codes for each scene, but Zigman heavily emphasizes his artistic and storytelling role in the film’s narrative. It’s a nice featurette, though suprising for a film that doesn’t have a heavy score. “‘Married’ Rides the Rails” runs for 4 minutes and 44 seconds. This featurette focuses on the train scene when Angela is drunk, speaking with co-producer Roger M. Bobb about the setup, White and Smith talk about their characters in the scene, but the interesting comments are from producers Bobb, Perry and Cannon trying to get all their footage together in the time between stops to avoid major delays. “The Girls of ‘Married’” featurette runs for 4 minutes and 52 seconds, each of the major actresses and Perry speak on the characters individually and what it was like working together. There’s some behind-the-scenes footage of the women bonding on the set or figuring each other out, but it’s a fairly brief look at the women and characters of the film. “The Guys of ‘Married’” runs for 5 minutes and 50 seconds, again speaking with Perry and the major actors on their characters and camaraderie on and off screen. Cannon also chimes in briefly on the casting, but it’s mostly on the deep friendship between the five men as characters and actors. Basically the same as the above featurette, just a minute longer. “Winter in Whistler” runs for 4 minutes and 9 seconds. This final featurette could almost be a tourism board video for the city of Whistler, Canada where all of the outdoor scenes were filmed. Cannon, Perry and the actors talk about how much they loved filming in the town in Canada, the love of Canadian people and having to make some fake blizzards despite the frigid climate. Bonus trailers on the disc are: - “For Colored Girls” runs for 2 minutes and 27 seconds. - “Tyler Perry on Blu-Ray” runs for 53 seconds. - “Precious” 2 minutes and 40 seconds. - “Madea’s Big Happy Family” runs for 56 seconds. - “Why Did I Get Married Too?” runs for 2 minutes and 2 seconds.
Overall
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