Tyler Perry's A Fall From Grace

So, full disclosure: before "A Fall From Grace," I have never seen a Tyler Perry flick before. I haven't done bad, either by myself or with others. No Madea. No Diary of a Mad Black Woman.

After seeing "Grace," I can't imagine I'm missing much.

Most of my exposure to Perry was from "Gone Girl," where he played Ben Affleck's lawyer. He did a fine job in that role. I don't know where things went wrong.

"Grace" stars Crystal Fox as...Grace, a divorcee who, as we meet her, is in jail, awaiting trial for murder. And no, her name as titular reference is hardly the most on-the-nose thing about this movie, which as you might have guessed from that title has all the subtlety of a chainsaw, and about the same amount of nuance.

Grace, you see, has killed her husband Shannon (Mehcad Brooks). Yes, she murdered her man, not in cold blood, but because, after a whirlwind courtship in which he was the most handsome, gentlemanly, respectful boyfriend you can imagine (to the point of nausea, as a matter of fact), he soon proves to be less-than once he puts a ring on it.

Of course, Shannon is in a sense a stand-in for any number of lousy, husbands, men who bully and push their women to and past the breaking point. But in this film, he's nothing more than a cartoonish buffoon, and his exaggerated presence, attitude, and actions makes Grace look ridiculous rather than righteous.

In one flashback sequence, Grace catches Shannon in bed with another woman. She of course screams at him to get out of her house, but he simply pushes her out of the bedroom, locks the door, and continues having sex with the woman. He told his paramour Grace was his mother. Later, after another girlfriend has left the home, he approaches Grace and says "you should have joined us." And this was AFTER he got her fired from her job (after stealing $375,000) and took out a mortgage on her house. How he did that without her knowledge is a mystery.

Meanwhile, back in present day, Grace's lawyer Jasmine (Bresha Webb) is known for her plea bargaining, and urges Grace to plead out. But when she hears Grace's story, she decides to help her by going to court. With the help of Grace's bestie Sarah (Phylicia Rashad), they set out to prove her innocence.

The problem is, Jasmine is a terrible lawyer, a point her own boss (Perry) points out to her repeatedly. Emblematic of her legal buffoonery includes not bothering to locate phone records, resting her case right after her star witness gives damning testimony, then the following morning, AFTER the prosecution makes their closing statement, she decides she's going to re-call her star witness after all.

"That's not how it's done," says the judge. It doesn't matter, though, because Jasmine decides if she just continues screaming at the judge that she's calling someone to the stand, he will eventually acquiesce. Spoiler alert: he doesn't.

At one point, Jasmine tells the jury: "Beyond a reasonable doubt. That's the conclusion you need to get past to reach a verdict. There are a lot of doubts here, and they're all beyond reasonable." Keep in mind she is the DEFENSE attorney, and is essentially telling the jury they must convict her client. This is not what she was intending to say.

It feels like Jasmine's legal training consists of her watching 2/3 of "A Few Good Men" (the TV-edited version, of course), then decided it would be fun to do that.

"Grace" reads like the first draft of a script that emerged from the mind of a C student in a high-school screenwriting class. The characters are hardly even fleshed out enough to be archetypes. Sequences depicting Grace's relationship with Shannon are the worst kind of obvious and trite, and I've seen hastily-assembled, ripped-from-the-headlines movies-of-the-week with more legal know-how.

So now I've seen a Tyler Perry movie. This is indefensible, one of the worst movies I've seen in several years. It is lazily written dreck, the worst kind of cinema, which I not only cannot recommend to anyone, but also can't understand how anyone could stomach watching this.

"A Fall from Grace" is streaming on Netflix, so those are the people you can blame for spending money on this mess.