Movie Review: Acrimony

Acrimony is a great word, defined:

From Dictionary.com:

noun 1. sharpness, harshness, or bitterness of nature, speech, disposition, etc.: The speaker attacked him with great acrimony.

I recently saw Tyler Perry on a talk show where he mentioned that he also thought that Acrimony was a great word and he had to look it up to make sure he had the correct definition. To me the word has always represented a very high level of anger, caused mainly by a major injustice in a person's life or the need for revenge.

In order to do justice to a word like this, Tyler Perry had a very tall order ahead of him and had to write a screenplay that was believable in terms of the buildup to an ending where everyone in the audience would believe that the woman scorned can be understood based on all she had gone through to get to this final moment. The scorned woman in this movie, played extremely well by Taraji P Henson, went through hell.

On all counts, I thought that Tyler Perry's screenplay scored and provided the buildup and emotion that made me believe everything that happened in this movie. I cannot remember a movie I have seen in a long time that provided this many emotions in two hours. Jealousy, rage, indifference, misery, fear, failure, success, regret, love and hatred. What I don't understand the most about this movie is that the critics on Rotten Tomatoes are only giving this film a very low rating of 25%. This could be that they don't like or are jealous of Perry's success as a movie maker or for perhaps because they think they have seen elements of a movie like this before. There are elements of other movies in this one and even in some of Perry's other movies but I thought this film was outstanding because of the unusual and believable story and the many twists and turns throughout the entire two hours. This is why it is so extremely difficult to write a screenplay that is loved by both the audience and critics; a concept reinforced when I read critical comments about a good movie like Acrimony that in my opinion are all dead wrong.

A couple meets in college, there are good times and some bad times and then the realities of having to make a living and having a big dream cause conflict and understandable financial problems. Life happens. As this story unwinds through the many years of a couple's relationship the harsh life realities of work, luck, misunderstandings and timing come into play and are written about brilliantly in Tyler Perry's impressive screenplay. Some critics are comparing this movie to Fatal Attraction that was released in 1987 but in terms of a real story I thought that this movie greatly exceeds the story from that movie.

I thought this movie was extremely well written and acted and I highly recommend it. The critics are wrong. This movie should be seen.