To clarify, the title Tyler Perry’s Straw (now on Netflix) refers to “the last straw,” as in the one that broke the camel’s back. As for the “Tyler Perry” part, well, you know what that implies by now: either a ridiculous thriller or broad comedy, sloppily written and held together with bad-wig glue. And yes, I can confirm that Straw does not waver from the Perry formula, even down to its principal star, Taraji P. Henson, who’s now been in four of his films – and reportedly spent only four days on set filming, which is right in line with Perry’s quick-and-dirty M.O. She plays a hard-luck woman pushed to and over the edge on the worst day of her life, and this being a Perry joint, the worst day of her life is the worst day of anyone’s life in the history of humanity. The dude can’t help but pile on until the whole thing buckles from the weight, which, now that I think of it, is the central metaphor here, isn’t it? And to be fair, unlike too many of his films, and like a few of his more ambitious ones, Perry absolutely has something to say here. Whether he knows how to say it effectively is the problem.
The Gist: The ceiling fan spins complacently, like it barely has the juice to push even a few molecules of air. The kitchen is cluttered and grubby. Prescription bottles linger with dirty dishes and an eviction notice. It’s 6 a.m., and hip-hop loudly thumps from a neighboring apartment. Janiyah (Henson) awakens in the bed she shares with her daughter, fresh from a dream in which she carried the girl through a hospital corridor. That’s happened a lot lately – Aria (Gabby Jackson) is a grade-schooler who’s been having seizures, and all her mom can do is give her medicine and hope she “grows out of it” as the medical bills pile up. Janiyah does all of this by herself – two jobs, no health insurance, a checking-account balance that has barely two digits in front of the decimal point. The hand is struggling to reach the mouth at this point.
But this day. This day will not be the good day that Ice Cube raps about on the soundtrack. On the way out, the landlady gives Janiyah an earful about the back rent. She drops Aria at school, where they’re short $40 for lunch money. She goes to work at her supermarket-cashier gig and she’s late and the line is long and her boss (Glynn Turman) cusses her out and the angry customers smash bottles at her feet and she gets blamed for it. She begs for a break to withdraw the money to pay the school but the ATM won’t spit out the cash. She accidentally cuts a man off in traffic, and he proceeds to ram her off the road and threatens to kill her after revealing that he’s an undercover cop – he’s a White guy with lots of tats, so that tracks in Stereotype Land. She gets multiple tickets. She goes back to work only to find out she’s been fired. She goes home to find all her stuff on the curb, even Aria’s medicine, and it’s raining. Buckets. She tries to shake down her boss for her last check and wouldn’t you know it, two guys with guns try to rob the supermarket. She wrestles the gun away and shoots one of the perps, and wouldn’t you know it, her boss thinks she was in on it and tells that to the cops.
More less-than-ideal stuff happens. We needn’t spoil it all. But it goes on and on, a downward spiral into the bowels of Heck. Janiyah has snapped. But! She gets her check. There’s blood splattered on it, but she gets it. She heads to the bank – Benevolent Cash and Trust; this is Perry being ironic – to cash it, and is so out of her mind, she doesn’t realize she’s still holding the pistol, finger on trigger. Silent alarms get triggered. Customers gasp. Cop cars screech into the strip mall parking lot. The bank manager, Nicole (Sherri Shepherd), tries to deescalate. So does Det. Kay Raymond (Teyana Taylor), calling on the hostage hotline. Maybe they will actually listen to Janiyah, and stop assuming beyond the minimum worst to the absolute worst. Did I mention that Janiyah is carrying a clear backpack? With Aria’s school science project in it? A school science project consisting of batteries, wires, blinking lights and things that go beep beep beep, and that happens to look like a bomb? Is this the straw that breaks our suspension of disbelief? Or did that already snap a half-hour ago?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This is roughly Tyler Perry’s Falling Down, except his Black woman protag is actually put upon, instead of a White man protag who feels more put upon than he actually is. Straw also pretty much gets on its knees and begs to be Tyler Perry’s Dog Day Afternoon.
Performance Worth Watching: Henson must’ve felt utterly drained after those four days. She goes for it. Big time intensity here. And her work is nicely contrasted by Shepherd’s calming presence. Perry doesn’t deserve either of them.
Memorable Dialogue: Here’s the thesis statement:
Nicole: It seems like you had a lot to get over today.
Janiyah: Black women always have something to get over.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: So. You buying any of this? The broadstroked desperation, yes. The details, less so. Perry wants to reflect the struggles of single Black mothers who fight societal systems every day in order to make ends meet, and he makes that absolutely clear. So clear, he screams until the decibel meter breaks. Perry’s dogged attempts to make everything he does capital-E Entertaining comes at the expense of making something, well, frankly, good and/or meaningful. He just keeps pounding nails and pounding nails and pounding nails, building a 9,000-sq.-ft. deck for a 1,000-sq.-ft. house. It’s a step past overkill into ludicrousness. Janiyah’s no good very bad day makes Job look like he stubbed his toe.
It’s tempting to grade this on the Tyler Perry curve, since we know going in that he’s not exactly the master of subtlety. Or originality – he dares choreograph an overhead shot of Henson tilting back and screaming at the sky as she’s being drenched with rain, a cliche that needs to be exiled to the Moon. The overwrought pile-it-on plot is reflective of Perry’s quantity-over-quality philosophy, which pervades every corner of his, uh, art. He doesn’t know when to quit. His hyperventilation of a first act is 45 minutes of screaming and yelling and “symbolic” rainstorms, a series of detours and roadblocks and speed bumps and before you know it the car has no wheels or doors or a roof and it skids to a halt. He puts you in Janiyah’s tattered shoes and makes you run a marathon in them.
The film is reasonably functional when it calms the hell down and settles into the bank-hostage scenario. Commonsense conversations occur amidst the occasional bit of frustrating anti-logic. Cops bicker about jurisdiction. The media delivers breathless reports. The FBI shows up to bull-in-a-China-shop the situation, but Det. Kay staves them off. Crowds gather to chant their support for Janiyah, sort of led by a homeless guy played by Sinbad who vouches for her character (she always had a few coins to give him despite her own hardship). This is generic movie-thriller stuff, but at least it’s baseline functional.
Whether all this adds up to a legit representation of the Black woman’s plea for empathy and respect is the question. While watching, I often contemplated the old adage about not knowing what other people are going through, and giving strangers the benefit of the doubt instead of jumping to conclusions. I also rolled my eyes frequently. Perry tugs us in enough disparate directions, it makes a viewer feel like he’s being drawn and quartered. Ultimately, Straw is just too silly and contrived to be taken seriously, Perry routinely undermining his statements and criticisms with peabrained nonsense. E.g., the inevitable trademark Tyler Twist, which pulls a couple of rugs out from under us, and/or hits us like a meteor – pick your allegory. Or better yet, pick a better movie.
Our Call: Straw’s flaws torpedo its intent. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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