Review Summary

In “Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All by Myself,” Mr. Perry has his moviemaking machine running smoothly, which is to say somewhat predictably. But two of the film’s stars fashion attention-getting performances amid the formulaic goings-on, one of them a young newcomer and the other a household name. The newcomer is Hope Olaidé Wilson, who is wonderfully convincing as Jennifer, a sullen, angry 16-year-old who, with two younger brothers (Freddy Siglar and Kwesi Boakye), has the bad judgment to break into the home inhabited by Mr. Perry’s outlandish Madea character. Madea delivers the three children to their only available relative, an aunt named April (Taraji P. Henson), a woman-gone-wrong catchall: smokes, drinks too much, sleeps with a married man, thinks of nothing but her own needs. The movie is about April’s inevitable redemption, which is aided by a Hispanic handyman (Adam Rodriguez) and a concerned acquaintance named Wilma, played beautifully by the aforementioned household name, Gladys Knight. -- Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times