Criticwatch - Obsessed with fake positive images

Erik Childress at Criticwatch gives us the Ben Lyons Quote of the Week:

Lyons: "Say what you want about the movies of Tyler Perry or even the recently released, Obsessed, but those films, for the most part, at least project positive images of intelligent, powerful and sophisticated minority characters.”

Ben Lyons’ entire review of Next Day Air this week was in the running for the Quote of the Week. Such a veritable cornucopia of “what-did-he-say?” moments that it would have been easy to print one long run-on sentence in quotations. I refrained since doctors recommend smacking yourself in the head over a period of time rather than one after another. At least that’s what mine told me after I checked myself into Alexian Brothers directly after this week’s show.

Lyons giving a half-hearted compliment to his DJ buddy and future household name (his words), Idris Elba, while panning the film wasn’t that big of a deal. Basically saying Elba can do much better really isn’t saying much, although that’s really only held true of his TV work on The Wire and The Office. When I saw Obsessed a couple weeks back with my colleague, Peter Sobczynski, we agreed that at least Tyler Perry’s films, as abhorrent as they are, at least had a streak of trying to create a positive message. He fails miserably each time out, but at least he tries. Obsessed, on the other hand, has no redeeming positive values. Sure, Idris Elba’s character doesn’t go full Michael Douglas and sleep with the crazy white chick but no one would accuse ANY of the characters in the film of being “intelligent.” Certainly it’s the white women of the film (Ali Larter’s temp, Scout Taylor-Compton’s babysitter and Christine Lahti’s detective) who lead the pack in batshit stupid but I doubt anyone is looking towards Beyonce’s character (Elba’s original secretary who later became his housewife) who goes all "oh no you didn't" on Larter as a positive image.

Read the entire review here