Last night showed me quite conclusively that there are some advantages to doing a little legwork on the movies you're about to screen. The film in question? Diary of a Mad Black Woman.
As a Reasonably Upbeat White Man, I determined right away that I wasn't quite who writer Tyler Perry had in mind for his audience. In fact, the other three press guys and I constituted 80% of the white male audience for the flick (and the other guy was, I'm pretty sure, another reviewer who showed up late). No big deal, as I was only cursorily aware of Perry as a writer and the character of Madea, the mouthy, gun-toting old woman he also plays. I'm (usually) always interested in checking out something new, so this was - I hoped - going to be a learning experience.
Trepidation started setting in when I recognized the call letters for the radio station doing the promotion. KWWJ is a local gospel station that I'm not all that familiar with, to put it mildly. The t-shirt contest consisted of Bible questions, which led to a series of "humorous" muttered responses from the four assembled press assholes, yours truly, "Zeke," "Bubs," and "Bort:"
Q: What is the 2nd book of the Bible?
Zeke: Midnight in the Garden of Gethsemane
Bubs: Exodus: Movement of Jah People
Bort: Which Bible?
Pete: Genesis II - The Wrath of Cain
Bubs got that one.
Q: If you attend next month's Praise and Worship Conference, you will receive:
Zeke: One meeelion dollars.
Bubs: One night with Mel Gibson.
Bort: A ride in the Popemobile?
Pete: An autographed picture of Jesus Christ.
What a bunch of sad, bitter men we are.
I'd pay to see "Genesis II: The Wrath of Cain" with Vin Diesel as Cain, Jennifer Garner as his wife/sister and Jonathan Lipnicki as Enoch.
"Captain, if we figure time as Jehovah does, 7 days might seem like epochs."
This reminds me of when my best friend and I went to see Waiting to Exhale at Meyer Park 16...we were the only two white people in the theater, and at one point half of the audience was yelling stuff like "Girl, you need to KILL that white bitch!" The woman sitting next to me had 3-inch long fingernails, so I pretty much felt like she could say whatever she wanted...
I think Bubs should have brought an Admiral Ackbar mask, so when the Bible questions started, he could have said "It's a TRAP!!"
I will admit to having no idea what this movie was all about upon seeing the trailer. I thought it was Big Momma's House II or something, but they couldn't afford Martin Lawrence.