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Actress Kimberley Elise impressed critics last year with a riveting performance in the film Woman, Thou Art Loosed. She played a woman suffering from a lifetime of abuse by unfaithful and dangerous men, a woman who eventually turned to violence to settle the score.

In Diary of a Mad Black Woman, the big screen adaptation of Tyler Perry's popular stage play, Elise again plays a woman rightfully angry at a man's unfaithfulness. Elise plays Helen, the wife of an unfaithful husband. Her mother, Myrtle (Cicely Tyson), her cousin Brian (Tyler Perry himself, in one of three roles), and a potential beau named Orlando (Shemar Moore) all support her while she chronicles her pain and her struggle in diary entries.

LaTonya Taylor (Christianity Today Movies) writes, "The themes that emerge … are obvious: how to deal with relational pain and betrayal, and how wounded people can heal in a healthy emotional space somewhere between pained acceptance and soul-destroying rage before eventually learning to trust again."

Taylor praises Kimberley Elise who "brings A-game acting to this B-movie." But she criticizes poor character development, implausible dialogue, and a few other aspects of the film. She concludes, "The story's end is both predictable and surprising, combining a series of very sweet, truly moving moments with a climactic, tear-inducing end and a little twist. It's a satisfying end, but it takes a lot of work—and a lot of suspended disbelief—to get there."

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) says the film "mixes emotional drama with dollops of dark-edged comedy, resulting in a moving—if at times melodramatic—and fitfully humorous affirmation of faith, family and forgiveness, the tone of which alternates between raucously zany and spiritually soaring. Given Catholic teaching on marriage and divorce, some viewers may object to the film's resolution. Still, with its rousing gospel score, it is hard to find fault with the movie's overall celebration of faith as a source of strength in times of personal pain."

Christopher Lyon (Plugged In) agrees that the movie is "an uneven mix of drama and comedy, romance and revenge. Though the audience I saw it with clearly resonated with the theme of man's inhumanity to women, the characters are so one-dimensionally extreme that the story is almost pure melodrama." Lyon concludes by saying that the film fails "to offer a solid, biblical message" and settles for an underwhelming and too-familiar lie."

Michael Elliott (Movie Parables) sums it up: "Folks who decide to see Diary of a Mad Black Woman will be getting many films for the price of one. It's a weepy melodrama … a raucous urban … [and] a Christian-oriented morality tale about love and forgiveness. The problem is that those elements don't blend together particularly well, resulting in often jarring shifts in tone and mood."

Only a few mainstream critics think all of this melodrama is a good thing.

So here's a film about an estranged brother (Jesse Eisenberg) and sister (Christina Ricci) getting back together and mending their relationship. A sweet, sappy story? Hardly. The reason they're back together is that a werewolf is after them, and they're fighting for their lives. Such is the premise of Cursed. Kinda gives new meaning to the term "sibling rivalry," doesn't it—only this time the rival isn't a sibling, but a scary creature.

Though it finished No. 4 at the box office, the religious critics who saw it say the movie itself might as well be cursed. It's that awful. Here are some of their "biting" remarks:

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March (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49