Thoughts on Tyler Perry's Acrimony
When I was in college I saw a little movie called "Eraserhead," which is the directorial debut of David Lynch. David Lynch is known for movies that are often regarded as strange by other people, and "Eraserhead" honestly makes the rest of his filmography seem normal by comparison. I doubted that I would ever come across a film that was stranger.
But recently I came across a little gem directed by Tyler Perry called "Acrimony." I rented it, and yes, this may be stranger and more memorable than anything David Lynch, or any other filmmaker whose work I've witnessed, has directed. This movie left me speechless!
In order to fully explain why this movie was memorable, I'm probably going to have to give a recap of the entire plot. So yes, spoilers ahead.
This film begins with our main character, Melinda (played by Taraji P. Henson, whom I must say did an excellent job, at least given the material she had) being ordered by a judge to stop harassing her ex-husband and his new fiancé, in addition to having to go to therapy. We then see Melinda sitting down on a couch in a therapist's office, looking like she has the wrath of the Devil within her, smoking a cigarette and stating that her husband, "owes me ever breathe in his body."
We then go back to Melinda's college days, where our story truly begins. College-aged Melinda is running frantically through the rainy campus. We see that, yes, Melinda truly does have anger management issues when she accidentally bumps into Robert, drops her papers, and begins to scream at him while at the same time frantically slapping him. Shortly afterwards Robert goes to her dorm room and kindly hands her papers that she dropped, and despite that fact that he was just screamed at and basically beaten by this woman, offers to help her with her classwork (young Melinda is failing in all of her classes).
So while being tutored by the smart and handsome Robert, Melinda immediately goes from wanting to smack him to falling deeply in love with him. Unfortunately she still fails her next big assignment, and right afterwards Melinda finds out that her mother has died.
Before going on with the plot of this motion picture, I'm going to point out something I wish writer Tyler Perry had fleshed out. We're meant to infer that Melinda had a great relationship with her mother, although I wish we knew just a little bit about her. We're told that she died, but one more line stating how she died (cancer, car wreck, etc...) would have been nice. We're also told, later on, that Melinda's Mom had worked her entire life to pay for her home; we're never told what type of job she had (entrepreneur, saleswoman, etc...).
Anyway, Robert goes to the funeral to support his new friend. Melinda has two older sisters (who seldom seem to be apart throughout the movie), both of whom automatically dislike Robert. Now, as I go forward with the synopsis of this film, they have plenty of reasons to dislike Robert, but at this point in the plot their reasoning seems to be that he's, "from the wrong side of the tracks." As Robert leaves the funeral Melinda finds out that he doesn't have a car and offers to drive him back home. We find out that Robert lives in a trailer parked outside his aunt's house, with the interior walls very yellowed and window shades that look like they're going to fall down at any moment. One thing leads to another, and Melinda and Robert end up having sex in his trailer with Nina Simone music playing in the background.
So Melinda, having both lost her mother and after quitting college, invests all of her time and attention to Robert. One of her older sisters (wisely) states that she shouldn't mention the fact that she inherited both her home (which is completely paid for) or $350,000.00 from her late mother to her new beau.
She does.
Anyway, in addition to his dream of finishing college and becoming an engineer, Robert has an idea for an invention. He's working on a new type of battery that recharges by itself after running out of fuel. While going through a late night stroll with Melinda, Robert talks about a company called Prescott & Howard, which apparently invests in new ideas, and also dreamily talks about the high end apartment and the yacht he dreams of purchasing when he finally makes it big.
Now, before I go any further into the story, I must say that, while I am not an expert in business by any stretch of the imagination, the companies in this film work very oddly and probably would not function well in the real work. During their late night stroll, Robert explains that this company takes their submissions for inventions, and uses a lottery system to decide what to invest in. Now, I imagine in the real work the dialogue setting up a meeting between the company and an inventor would go something like this.
Big Shot from the Company: Hi, this is Prescott & Howard, we just love your idea. We think it's going to change the world!
Inventor: That's great!
Big Shot from the Company: How about we set a meeting to discuss the details and get a deal going. Does Monday at 9:30 A.M. work for you?
Inventor: Sounds lovely! I will see you then!
No. Instead this company calls the inventors and demands that they drop everything they're doing and immediately go to their company headquarters in one hour, or they will no longer be considered. That means if they have a day job they're doing while waiting for their big break, they have to leave it, even at the risk of being fired. If they're at their daughter's ballet recital, too bad, they have to leave it and go to the company headquarters, or they will not be considered. Doctor's appointment? Too bad! Surgery? Too bad! Son's baseball game? Too bad! Wedding of a good friend? Too bad! Funeral? Still need to be there in an hour!
Also, this is not only a good deal for the inventor, but also for the company. This pretty much means that the company itself is being limited to inventors that live within the city they're based in! Realistically, how many well thought out, good ideas for inventions are they going to find in one city? With the one hour rule, they're going to lose out on possibly good inventions from outside of the city, outside of the state, and possibly outside of the country.
Anyway, in her kindness and extreme love for Robert, Melinda buys him a car. And a few days after giving him said car and hearing about his dream for an everlasting battery, Melinda catches him cheating on her with another woman in his RV! In her rage Melinda takes her car and smashes it into the RV, making it turn over. The other woman, Diana, crawls out of the RV, stating that she had no idea Robert was seeing Melinda, and walks away. Melinda, meanwhile, ends up going to the hospital immediately afterwards. She slammed herself into the steering wheel of her car so much that she has to get a full hysterectomy, thus preventing her from ever having kids.
A little bit later, while Melinda is resting in her bedroom, Robert comes in, begging her to stay with him, saying that he was sorry beyond belief and that the other girl didn't mean anything and yada yada yada. A reasonable thing for Melinda to respond with would probably be something along the lines of, "Look, you cheated on me with another woman, and I basically tried to kill you with my Jeep. Maybe we should end this before it escalates." But no, they continue to see each other!
So Robert ends up moving in with Melinda, where he works on his battery (which she is now funding with her Mother's inheritance money!). He also loses his scholarship, and with two semesters left, Melinda offers to pay for the rest of his tuition, taking out over $70,000.00 from her account! In order to not just blast through her inheritance money Melinda ends up getting two jobs, neither of which she enjoys. She's an office assistant by day, and a janitor by night. While all of this goes on Robert asks her to marry him, and she does.
Eventually Robert graduates from college, and Melinda couldn't be more excited. Robert has apparently been offered three interviews for engineering jobs, each of which pays at least $150,000.00 a year! She thinks that she'll finally be free to quit her two jobs and not have to worry about financial ruin, and that she can just be the wife of a high-paying engineer while Robert takes care of her.
That is not the case.
After all three interviews, Robert isn't offered a single job, and Melinda is perplexed by this. Robert then says (I'm paraphrasing this), "Well, it might, just might, be because I'm a felon. You see, when I was fifteen I was in a gang and we tried to rob a grocery store and I got tried as an adult and..." This is all news to Melinda, who has just married the man and has paid tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, battery experimentation, and so on. In my head I was thinking, "When you two were dating did you just fuck each other and wax poetic about batteries!"
Robert then gets down on his knees and begs Melinda to mortgage the house, which is already paid for, so that he can continue to experiment on his battery. He reasons that this is the only road to success available to him.
And she does.
Eighteen years go by. Melinda is still working those two jobs, while Robert is continuing to tinker with his battery and tries to get the attention to Prescott & Howard, occasionally bringing in money with odd jobs (the type of jobs a teenager or child might do around the neighborhood I am lead to assume), and never actually getting a real job. For nearly two decades he had obsessively been sending in letters and video tapes of his experiments to Prescott & Howard. In my head I'm thinking, "Okay Robert, I know you're supposed to be a smart guy, but did it ever occur to you to maybe try a different company?!" If Robert truly has something as amazing as a self-charging battery, then there would likely be someone else who would be interested in it! When I've watched episodes of "Shark Tank" on TV, there are always five investors, not just one!
In a really, really big coincidence, Diana (portrayed by actress Crystle Stewart, who is beautifully stunning and was actually the winner of Miss USA 2008), the one whom Robert slept with all those years ago, ends up getting a job at Prescott & Howard. After being ignored by this one company for nearly two decades Robert goes up to her in front of the company's headquarters. She seemed very surprised when Robert informs her that he and Melinda actually ended up getting married. He admits that he was stupid for doing what he did all those years ago, and asks if there's any way she could get him a meeting with the company.
Meanwhile, it seems like they may lose the house. Both of Melinda's sisters are, justifiably, upset that Robert had her mortgage their childhood home. But they and their husbands, all of whom own a shipping company (think a smaller local version of UPS or FedEx) together, have come up with a plan to get enough money going to pay for said mortgage and save their house. It is, in all honesty, a very odd deal, one that would probably not work in real life, and again, I am going back to the fact that the companies in this movie work weirdly.
So, one of their major clients is a high end restaurant, whom they deliver fish to. They make a deal with the restaurant owner; he'll pay off the mortgage if they're on time with their deliveries to him, but if they are late he will take all of their trucks, essentially robbing them of their business. First off, why is this man not using UPS or FedEx. This local shipping company only works within the city limits. So I'm assuming that the fish this man is using in his meals are also being caught in a lake or river in this one city. Otherwise, he's getting the fish from someplace like Alaska, they're being shipped out via UPS or FedEx, and rather than have them ship them directly to his restaurant, they're shipping them to this one-city-only shipping company, so that they can deliver the fish to the restaurant. Second, is this shipping company the sisters own apparently often late? One shouldn't have to pay extra money (much less offer to pay off a mortgage!) in order to get their stuff on time.
So while Robert is still trying to getting his invention off the ground, he's recruited by the sisters and their husbands to work as a delivery driver for them. At one point he and Diana have a meeting (one that is strictly business) in one of the trucks he's delivering stuff in. Diana accidentally leaves her purse behind in the truck, and later on one of the sisters finds it. When she discovers that it's the purse of the woman Robert slept with nearly two decades previously, she assumes that he's sleeping with her again.
While in the middle of one of his deliveries, Robert finally gets the call he's been dreaming of! So he rushes back to the house, grabbing his battery and putting on a suit. One of the sister's husbands is keeping track of Robert, making absolutely sure that their deliveries are on time. He's screaming through the intercom, worried that he and his family are going to lose the business! While Robert is grabbing his stuff Melinda rushes out of the house and tries to physically beat him while he's on the lawn; she's been informed of the purse by her older sister, and thinks that he's sleeping with Diana again. Robert rushes out into his car, trying to make the meeting, while one of the sisters' husbands takes over the truck and tries to make the delivery on time.
Robert goes to the meeting he's been dreamed of for years. Thanks to Diana they finally decided to actually take a look at the videos and notes Robert has been sending for years, and think that maybe he actually has something. They offer to give him $800,000.00 to buy his invention and all associated rights, including his patent. Robert doesn't think that's a fair deal, and want to keep the patent and to be able to get royalties. After briefly debating this, Robert leaves with his battery and no deal.
Robert then comes home to Melinda, smoking a cigarette and giving her husband the evil eye, with her sisters and their husbands also in the house. They were late with the delivery, although in a moment of mercy the restaurant owner decided not to take their trucks, but will no longer be a client of theirs (and will probably use either UPS or FedEx, which he should have done in the first place!). Melinda is now about to lose the house. And they all assume that he's been sleeping with Diana, and that he quit the delivery in the middle to do so. Robert tries to explain that he actually had a meeting with Prescott & Howard, and that he's just waiting for them to call back and make a better deal. Melinda throws him out of the house, and when he tries fruitlessly to keep her favor, she says, "You know I can be the Devil."
Now, I am not an expert in relationships, but any relationship or marriage in which one person says to the other, "You know I can be the Devil," just needs to end. The relationship in this movie was just awful and dysfunctional from the get go. Both Melinda and Robert made incredibly stupid decisions throughout their courtship and marriage, and it was just toxic.
So while Melinda ends up moving in with her sisters after losing her home, Robert moves into a homeless shelter and gets a job washing dishes. Melinda starts seeing and sleeping with another man before she's officially divorced, although she doesn't really seem to have any real interest in him. And soon they end up getting divorced, although before signing the divorce papers Robert tries to get Melinda one last time to believe the truth that he didn't sleep with Diana again, and truly was trying to sell his invention.
Diana finds out that Robert is living in a homeless shelter and is now divorced, and feeling bad for him, offers to let him stay in her house. Shortly afterwards, Robert gets news from Prescott & Howard, and not only are they open to a new deal in which he can keep his patent, but instead of $800,000.00, they are offering him tens of millions of dollars.
So yes, this eccentric company goes from being annoyed by Robert sending them letters and videos for years, to offering nearly a million dollars for everything, to not only allowing him to keep his patent but to giving him tens of millions of dollars! And Robert goes from being in a troubled marriage, to being homeless, to becoming a multimillionaire!
Now, Robert has made a ton of bad decisions in his adult life. But to give him credit, he goes to Melinda's day job in a tuxedo, and proceeds to hand her flowers, the deed to her Mom's old house (which he bought back), and a check for ten million dollars. He apologizes that he wasn't the man he needed her to be, thanks her for believing in him as long as she did, and wishes her a good life.
Now, a normal, rational person would probably be thrilled that they were just handed millions of dollars and that they no longer had to work at two jobs they despised. But not Melinda. She shows the check to her sisters and their husbands (whom all seem to be only mildly surprised that she got a check from her ex-husband for millions of dollars), and bellows about how she shouldn't have listened to them, and that she should have stayed married to Robert.
So shortly afterwards, thinking that getting remarried to a man she forced to become homeless will take no effort whatsoever, Melinda goes to Robert's new fancy apartment, an apartment which would make Frasier Crane look on with envy. She walks in wearing a trench coat, and with nothing but lingerie on underneath. Melinda tries to seduce him, saying that she always believed in him and that it was just her sisters who tried put bad thoughts in her head. Then, Diana comes out, dressed in a beautiful gown. It's here that Melinda finds out that after the divorce, not only did Robert start dating Diana, but that they had gotten engaged.
So Melinda tries to sue Robert for half of his money. The judge is flabbergasted by this, stating that with the ten million dollar check, he had never seen a more generous act by an ex-husband. Melinda then goes off the deep end. She starts trolling Diana online. For hours in her house she turns on a red light, places photos of her ex-husband and Diana on the wall with daggers in their eyes, and dances like she's trying to cast a demonic spell. And in her penultimate act of vengeance, Melinda goes to the wedding boutique where Diana's dress is being kept, and pours acid all over it!
We then cut to the therapist's office, where Melinda has been telling this crazy tale. When the therapist asks if Melinda has ever considered that maybe, just maybe, she has borderline personality disorder, she gets up and leaves in a huff.
And so we get to the crazy climax of this motion picture. After getting married Robert and Diana go out on a honeymoon on their new yacht. At one point Diana gets up, and then Melinda, dressed in a wedding gown and holding a gun, who had somehow snuck aboard this vessel, points it at Robert, demanding that he call over his new wife. She wants to throw her overboard! He refuses, and Melinda shots her ex-husband. The crew of the yacht rushes towards him, but Melinda uses her gun to force each and every one of them to jump overboard. Diana returns, and in order to save her man, throws Melinda overboard. When she asks Robert if he's okay, he says he's fine, and tells her to get on the lifeboat and save the crew.
It's then, when he's all alone on the boat, that Melinda somehow gets up from the sea and back onto the boat. She chases her now gun-wounded ex-husband on the yacht with an ax. But Melinda gets tangled on the chains of an anchor. Before she can kill Robert, the anchor falls into the sea, taking Melinda down with it. The last we see of Melinda is her dead, floating at the bottom of the sea.
I can't say that this is a good movie by any means. Some of the performances, given the crazy material that the actors got, were pretty good. The plot was just insane and oftentimes made little to no sense if you turned your brain on by even 1%. Some of the effects could have been a lot better (there are scenes that are obviously green screened). And there are several moments of the plot that are just frustrating (are there no other companies in the world of this movie aside from Prescott & Howard!). But I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it on a "so bad it's good" level. I can't say that I could easily predict where the movie was going. I think this would be a great film to riff (think Mystery Science Theater 3000) and would be great to make fun of with a group of friends at a party.
This was also my first time watching a Tyler Perry movie. Shortly after watching this... special little film... I found a video essay on youtube analyzing some of his movies. And yes, they all seem to be about as strange as "Acrimony."
But recently I came across a little gem directed by Tyler Perry called "Acrimony." I rented it, and yes, this may be stranger and more memorable than anything David Lynch, or any other filmmaker whose work I've witnessed, has directed. This movie left me speechless!
In order to fully explain why this movie was memorable, I'm probably going to have to give a recap of the entire plot. So yes, spoilers ahead.
This film begins with our main character, Melinda (played by Taraji P. Henson, whom I must say did an excellent job, at least given the material she had) being ordered by a judge to stop harassing her ex-husband and his new fiancé, in addition to having to go to therapy. We then see Melinda sitting down on a couch in a therapist's office, looking like she has the wrath of the Devil within her, smoking a cigarette and stating that her husband, "owes me ever breathe in his body."
We then go back to Melinda's college days, where our story truly begins. College-aged Melinda is running frantically through the rainy campus. We see that, yes, Melinda truly does have anger management issues when she accidentally bumps into Robert, drops her papers, and begins to scream at him while at the same time frantically slapping him. Shortly afterwards Robert goes to her dorm room and kindly hands her papers that she dropped, and despite that fact that he was just screamed at and basically beaten by this woman, offers to help her with her classwork (young Melinda is failing in all of her classes).
So while being tutored by the smart and handsome Robert, Melinda immediately goes from wanting to smack him to falling deeply in love with him. Unfortunately she still fails her next big assignment, and right afterwards Melinda finds out that her mother has died.
Before going on with the plot of this motion picture, I'm going to point out something I wish writer Tyler Perry had fleshed out. We're meant to infer that Melinda had a great relationship with her mother, although I wish we knew just a little bit about her. We're told that she died, but one more line stating how she died (cancer, car wreck, etc...) would have been nice. We're also told, later on, that Melinda's Mom had worked her entire life to pay for her home; we're never told what type of job she had (entrepreneur, saleswoman, etc...).
Anyway, Robert goes to the funeral to support his new friend. Melinda has two older sisters (who seldom seem to be apart throughout the movie), both of whom automatically dislike Robert. Now, as I go forward with the synopsis of this film, they have plenty of reasons to dislike Robert, but at this point in the plot their reasoning seems to be that he's, "from the wrong side of the tracks." As Robert leaves the funeral Melinda finds out that he doesn't have a car and offers to drive him back home. We find out that Robert lives in a trailer parked outside his aunt's house, with the interior walls very yellowed and window shades that look like they're going to fall down at any moment. One thing leads to another, and Melinda and Robert end up having sex in his trailer with Nina Simone music playing in the background.
So Melinda, having both lost her mother and after quitting college, invests all of her time and attention to Robert. One of her older sisters (wisely) states that she shouldn't mention the fact that she inherited both her home (which is completely paid for) or $350,000.00 from her late mother to her new beau.
She does.
Anyway, in addition to his dream of finishing college and becoming an engineer, Robert has an idea for an invention. He's working on a new type of battery that recharges by itself after running out of fuel. While going through a late night stroll with Melinda, Robert talks about a company called Prescott & Howard, which apparently invests in new ideas, and also dreamily talks about the high end apartment and the yacht he dreams of purchasing when he finally makes it big.
Now, before I go any further into the story, I must say that, while I am not an expert in business by any stretch of the imagination, the companies in this film work very oddly and probably would not function well in the real work. During their late night stroll, Robert explains that this company takes their submissions for inventions, and uses a lottery system to decide what to invest in. Now, I imagine in the real work the dialogue setting up a meeting between the company and an inventor would go something like this.
Big Shot from the Company: Hi, this is Prescott & Howard, we just love your idea. We think it's going to change the world!
Inventor: That's great!
Big Shot from the Company: How about we set a meeting to discuss the details and get a deal going. Does Monday at 9:30 A.M. work for you?
Inventor: Sounds lovely! I will see you then!
No. Instead this company calls the inventors and demands that they drop everything they're doing and immediately go to their company headquarters in one hour, or they will no longer be considered. That means if they have a day job they're doing while waiting for their big break, they have to leave it, even at the risk of being fired. If they're at their daughter's ballet recital, too bad, they have to leave it and go to the company headquarters, or they will not be considered. Doctor's appointment? Too bad! Surgery? Too bad! Son's baseball game? Too bad! Wedding of a good friend? Too bad! Funeral? Still need to be there in an hour!
Also, this is not only a good deal for the inventor, but also for the company. This pretty much means that the company itself is being limited to inventors that live within the city they're based in! Realistically, how many well thought out, good ideas for inventions are they going to find in one city? With the one hour rule, they're going to lose out on possibly good inventions from outside of the city, outside of the state, and possibly outside of the country.
Anyway, in her kindness and extreme love for Robert, Melinda buys him a car. And a few days after giving him said car and hearing about his dream for an everlasting battery, Melinda catches him cheating on her with another woman in his RV! In her rage Melinda takes her car and smashes it into the RV, making it turn over. The other woman, Diana, crawls out of the RV, stating that she had no idea Robert was seeing Melinda, and walks away. Melinda, meanwhile, ends up going to the hospital immediately afterwards. She slammed herself into the steering wheel of her car so much that she has to get a full hysterectomy, thus preventing her from ever having kids.
A little bit later, while Melinda is resting in her bedroom, Robert comes in, begging her to stay with him, saying that he was sorry beyond belief and that the other girl didn't mean anything and yada yada yada. A reasonable thing for Melinda to respond with would probably be something along the lines of, "Look, you cheated on me with another woman, and I basically tried to kill you with my Jeep. Maybe we should end this before it escalates." But no, they continue to see each other!
So Robert ends up moving in with Melinda, where he works on his battery (which she is now funding with her Mother's inheritance money!). He also loses his scholarship, and with two semesters left, Melinda offers to pay for the rest of his tuition, taking out over $70,000.00 from her account! In order to not just blast through her inheritance money Melinda ends up getting two jobs, neither of which she enjoys. She's an office assistant by day, and a janitor by night. While all of this goes on Robert asks her to marry him, and she does.
Eventually Robert graduates from college, and Melinda couldn't be more excited. Robert has apparently been offered three interviews for engineering jobs, each of which pays at least $150,000.00 a year! She thinks that she'll finally be free to quit her two jobs and not have to worry about financial ruin, and that she can just be the wife of a high-paying engineer while Robert takes care of her.
That is not the case.
After all three interviews, Robert isn't offered a single job, and Melinda is perplexed by this. Robert then says (I'm paraphrasing this), "Well, it might, just might, be because I'm a felon. You see, when I was fifteen I was in a gang and we tried to rob a grocery store and I got tried as an adult and..." This is all news to Melinda, who has just married the man and has paid tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, battery experimentation, and so on. In my head I was thinking, "When you two were dating did you just fuck each other and wax poetic about batteries!"
Robert then gets down on his knees and begs Melinda to mortgage the house, which is already paid for, so that he can continue to experiment on his battery. He reasons that this is the only road to success available to him.
And she does.
Eighteen years go by. Melinda is still working those two jobs, while Robert is continuing to tinker with his battery and tries to get the attention to Prescott & Howard, occasionally bringing in money with odd jobs (the type of jobs a teenager or child might do around the neighborhood I am lead to assume), and never actually getting a real job. For nearly two decades he had obsessively been sending in letters and video tapes of his experiments to Prescott & Howard. In my head I'm thinking, "Okay Robert, I know you're supposed to be a smart guy, but did it ever occur to you to maybe try a different company?!" If Robert truly has something as amazing as a self-charging battery, then there would likely be someone else who would be interested in it! When I've watched episodes of "Shark Tank" on TV, there are always five investors, not just one!
In a really, really big coincidence, Diana (portrayed by actress Crystle Stewart, who is beautifully stunning and was actually the winner of Miss USA 2008), the one whom Robert slept with all those years ago, ends up getting a job at Prescott & Howard. After being ignored by this one company for nearly two decades Robert goes up to her in front of the company's headquarters. She seemed very surprised when Robert informs her that he and Melinda actually ended up getting married. He admits that he was stupid for doing what he did all those years ago, and asks if there's any way she could get him a meeting with the company.
Meanwhile, it seems like they may lose the house. Both of Melinda's sisters are, justifiably, upset that Robert had her mortgage their childhood home. But they and their husbands, all of whom own a shipping company (think a smaller local version of UPS or FedEx) together, have come up with a plan to get enough money going to pay for said mortgage and save their house. It is, in all honesty, a very odd deal, one that would probably not work in real life, and again, I am going back to the fact that the companies in this movie work weirdly.
So, one of their major clients is a high end restaurant, whom they deliver fish to. They make a deal with the restaurant owner; he'll pay off the mortgage if they're on time with their deliveries to him, but if they are late he will take all of their trucks, essentially robbing them of their business. First off, why is this man not using UPS or FedEx. This local shipping company only works within the city limits. So I'm assuming that the fish this man is using in his meals are also being caught in a lake or river in this one city. Otherwise, he's getting the fish from someplace like Alaska, they're being shipped out via UPS or FedEx, and rather than have them ship them directly to his restaurant, they're shipping them to this one-city-only shipping company, so that they can deliver the fish to the restaurant. Second, is this shipping company the sisters own apparently often late? One shouldn't have to pay extra money (much less offer to pay off a mortgage!) in order to get their stuff on time.
So while Robert is still trying to getting his invention off the ground, he's recruited by the sisters and their husbands to work as a delivery driver for them. At one point he and Diana have a meeting (one that is strictly business) in one of the trucks he's delivering stuff in. Diana accidentally leaves her purse behind in the truck, and later on one of the sisters finds it. When she discovers that it's the purse of the woman Robert slept with nearly two decades previously, she assumes that he's sleeping with her again.
While in the middle of one of his deliveries, Robert finally gets the call he's been dreaming of! So he rushes back to the house, grabbing his battery and putting on a suit. One of the sister's husbands is keeping track of Robert, making absolutely sure that their deliveries are on time. He's screaming through the intercom, worried that he and his family are going to lose the business! While Robert is grabbing his stuff Melinda rushes out of the house and tries to physically beat him while he's on the lawn; she's been informed of the purse by her older sister, and thinks that he's sleeping with Diana again. Robert rushes out into his car, trying to make the meeting, while one of the sisters' husbands takes over the truck and tries to make the delivery on time.
Robert goes to the meeting he's been dreamed of for years. Thanks to Diana they finally decided to actually take a look at the videos and notes Robert has been sending for years, and think that maybe he actually has something. They offer to give him $800,000.00 to buy his invention and all associated rights, including his patent. Robert doesn't think that's a fair deal, and want to keep the patent and to be able to get royalties. After briefly debating this, Robert leaves with his battery and no deal.
Robert then comes home to Melinda, smoking a cigarette and giving her husband the evil eye, with her sisters and their husbands also in the house. They were late with the delivery, although in a moment of mercy the restaurant owner decided not to take their trucks, but will no longer be a client of theirs (and will probably use either UPS or FedEx, which he should have done in the first place!). Melinda is now about to lose the house. And they all assume that he's been sleeping with Diana, and that he quit the delivery in the middle to do so. Robert tries to explain that he actually had a meeting with Prescott & Howard, and that he's just waiting for them to call back and make a better deal. Melinda throws him out of the house, and when he tries fruitlessly to keep her favor, she says, "You know I can be the Devil."
Now, I am not an expert in relationships, but any relationship or marriage in which one person says to the other, "You know I can be the Devil," just needs to end. The relationship in this movie was just awful and dysfunctional from the get go. Both Melinda and Robert made incredibly stupid decisions throughout their courtship and marriage, and it was just toxic.
So while Melinda ends up moving in with her sisters after losing her home, Robert moves into a homeless shelter and gets a job washing dishes. Melinda starts seeing and sleeping with another man before she's officially divorced, although she doesn't really seem to have any real interest in him. And soon they end up getting divorced, although before signing the divorce papers Robert tries to get Melinda one last time to believe the truth that he didn't sleep with Diana again, and truly was trying to sell his invention.
Diana finds out that Robert is living in a homeless shelter and is now divorced, and feeling bad for him, offers to let him stay in her house. Shortly afterwards, Robert gets news from Prescott & Howard, and not only are they open to a new deal in which he can keep his patent, but instead of $800,000.00, they are offering him tens of millions of dollars.
So yes, this eccentric company goes from being annoyed by Robert sending them letters and videos for years, to offering nearly a million dollars for everything, to not only allowing him to keep his patent but to giving him tens of millions of dollars! And Robert goes from being in a troubled marriage, to being homeless, to becoming a multimillionaire!
Now, Robert has made a ton of bad decisions in his adult life. But to give him credit, he goes to Melinda's day job in a tuxedo, and proceeds to hand her flowers, the deed to her Mom's old house (which he bought back), and a check for ten million dollars. He apologizes that he wasn't the man he needed her to be, thanks her for believing in him as long as she did, and wishes her a good life.
Now, a normal, rational person would probably be thrilled that they were just handed millions of dollars and that they no longer had to work at two jobs they despised. But not Melinda. She shows the check to her sisters and their husbands (whom all seem to be only mildly surprised that she got a check from her ex-husband for millions of dollars), and bellows about how she shouldn't have listened to them, and that she should have stayed married to Robert.
So shortly afterwards, thinking that getting remarried to a man she forced to become homeless will take no effort whatsoever, Melinda goes to Robert's new fancy apartment, an apartment which would make Frasier Crane look on with envy. She walks in wearing a trench coat, and with nothing but lingerie on underneath. Melinda tries to seduce him, saying that she always believed in him and that it was just her sisters who tried put bad thoughts in her head. Then, Diana comes out, dressed in a beautiful gown. It's here that Melinda finds out that after the divorce, not only did Robert start dating Diana, but that they had gotten engaged.
So Melinda tries to sue Robert for half of his money. The judge is flabbergasted by this, stating that with the ten million dollar check, he had never seen a more generous act by an ex-husband. Melinda then goes off the deep end. She starts trolling Diana online. For hours in her house she turns on a red light, places photos of her ex-husband and Diana on the wall with daggers in their eyes, and dances like she's trying to cast a demonic spell. And in her penultimate act of vengeance, Melinda goes to the wedding boutique where Diana's dress is being kept, and pours acid all over it!
We then cut to the therapist's office, where Melinda has been telling this crazy tale. When the therapist asks if Melinda has ever considered that maybe, just maybe, she has borderline personality disorder, she gets up and leaves in a huff.
And so we get to the crazy climax of this motion picture. After getting married Robert and Diana go out on a honeymoon on their new yacht. At one point Diana gets up, and then Melinda, dressed in a wedding gown and holding a gun, who had somehow snuck aboard this vessel, points it at Robert, demanding that he call over his new wife. She wants to throw her overboard! He refuses, and Melinda shots her ex-husband. The crew of the yacht rushes towards him, but Melinda uses her gun to force each and every one of them to jump overboard. Diana returns, and in order to save her man, throws Melinda overboard. When she asks Robert if he's okay, he says he's fine, and tells her to get on the lifeboat and save the crew.
It's then, when he's all alone on the boat, that Melinda somehow gets up from the sea and back onto the boat. She chases her now gun-wounded ex-husband on the yacht with an ax. But Melinda gets tangled on the chains of an anchor. Before she can kill Robert, the anchor falls into the sea, taking Melinda down with it. The last we see of Melinda is her dead, floating at the bottom of the sea.
I can't say that this is a good movie by any means. Some of the performances, given the crazy material that the actors got, were pretty good. The plot was just insane and oftentimes made little to no sense if you turned your brain on by even 1%. Some of the effects could have been a lot better (there are scenes that are obviously green screened). And there are several moments of the plot that are just frustrating (are there no other companies in the world of this movie aside from Prescott & Howard!). But I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it on a "so bad it's good" level. I can't say that I could easily predict where the movie was going. I think this would be a great film to riff (think Mystery Science Theater 3000) and would be great to make fun of with a group of friends at a party.
This was also my first time watching a Tyler Perry movie. Shortly after watching this... special little film... I found a video essay on youtube analyzing some of his movies. And yes, they all seem to be about as strange as "Acrimony."
Comments
Post a Comment