Rent Nobody's Fool (2018)

Nobody's Fool review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Not at all surprising for a Tyler Perry comedy, Nobody’s Fool is a gossip goulash. Here are the ingredients: one all-star cast (Tiffany Haddish, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock), one catfishing tale, one sexual romance, and one super-loud comic relief character. Stir for two hours and you have a muddled mess of a twisty-turny sexual romance amid swirling rumors and social commentary that trips all over itself. It is perhaps not as maddening as when Perry tries to whip up his confounding dramas of questionable messages; more of an agonizing slog of he-said-she-said, like a whole bunch of half-thought soap opera episodes were shoved down your throat at once.

The premise is that the successful marketing exec Danica (Tika Sumpter) is looking to go steady with a boyfriend, Charlie, who she hasn’t met. Sound suspicious but she buys into this relationship. It takes the arrival of Danica’s ex-con sister Tanya (Tiffany Haddish) to know that this relationship isn’t on the up and up. She’d have to figure this out considering how unbelievably loud, obnoxious, and confrontational she is. Tanya is a roommate from hell, bursting into her sister’s place, refusing to shut up, and trying on her wedding dress. Oh, but Tanya means well, willing to sniff out the catfishing going on here. Only for as long as she’s willing though, considering she has a sexual appetite as well.

I know should expect this sort of direction by now but Perry’s direction has all the subtlety of a wrecking ball. Comedy is contained to a handful of scenes where it seems like Haddish goes off the script because she’s far too good for this melodramatic dialogue. Everything else is an absolutely unbelievable farce and uneven gloom. For instance, Danica will start to have second thoughts about the man she is dating, but it’s not over small ticks. He’s extra loud in a restaurant, drinks too much, forces himself into sex that lasts for only a few seconds before he starts making cartoon noises, and so on.

The general message amid this tossing and turning tale that can’t balance between romance and comedy is that men suck. Fair enough for a female-oriented comedy, but so many of the men are brutish and goofy figures that it’s a wonder why this elongated film would bother crafting melodrama around this structure. But, again, that’s the Perry formula. I recognize it but I’m still not digging it. It’s an especially bitter mixture when you consider the wasted potential of Whoopi Goldberg as Danica’s mother who seems to only talk about weed and Chris Rock as a wheelchair-bound pervert. Is that the only space these characters have in a film such as this? Perhaps if they were on screen too long, they’d upstage the main actors slogging through this off-tone story.

Nobody’s Fool is far too long for the silly romance it weaves, never coming off believable or entertaining as it bounces between so many emotions. Sure, it’s a waste of time akin to other Perry films but I just can’t shake the bitterness over seeing the likes Haddish, Goldberg, and Rock being wasted with nothing lines that serve as either boring filler or poorly biting exposition. Don’t be fooled; there’s not much clever here.