A woman is released from prison and reunites with her sister. She soon discovers that her sister is in an online relationship with a man who may not be what he seems.
I admire Tyler Perry as a filmmaker. He has brought many movies and TV shows to his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, and converted Fort McPherson, a prior military base, into a 330-acre film studio which filmmakers and TV producers can now utilize instead of having to shoot their projects in Hollywood. As an indie filmmaker myself for over thirty years, THAT is my ultimate goal, not to have to go to Hollywood to make it in the business but rather, set up my own studios which would allow other filmmakers the opportunity to utilize them and still manage to stay within the Hollywood industry. His films, however, are an acquired taste. Madea has to be one of the most annoying characters to grace the silver screen but she found an audience and has made Mr. Tyler a fortune. The same cannot be said for “Nobody’s Fool,” a movie about falling in love and second chances that on the outside, seems pretty straightforward but after watching it all the way through, is nothing but a shallow narrative that utilizes crass language and unlikable characters to try and tell its story.
Danica (Tika Sumpter) is a successful marketer at an ad agency and is in a relationship with Charlie (Mehcad Brooks), a man whom she met online but has never met, or seen, as he supposedly works on an oil rig somewhere off the coast with little to no wifi. They both talk to each other every night and consider themselves “soulmates,” even though they have never met each other. Danica’s sister, Tanya (Tiffany Haddish), has just gotten out of prison after serving five years and when their mother Lola (Whoopi Goldberg), informs them that Tanya won’t be staying with her, Danica steps up to the plate and lets her stay with her. Every morning on her way to work, Danica stops to get a coffee at a local coffee shop owned by Frank (Omari Hardwick), who gives her a free cup and a rose. Even though she has told him that she is in a relationship, it doesn’t stop him from letting her know that he likes her. When Tanya accompanies her into the coffee shop one morning, realizing that they are sisters and that Tanya needs to find a job, Frank offers her work at the coffee shop, much to Danica’s surprise. She tells him that she is a handful but he insists on employing her.
When it comes to light, thanks to Tanya, that Charlie is not real and is, in fact, a man using a fake identity in order to lure women into a relationship under false pretenses, Danica retreats to her apartment for days on end, her job suffering as a result. When Frank drops by one day to talk to her, she sees him in a completely different light as he is understanding and compassionate to her plight and they end up making love but when she discovers that he served time in prison many years ago, she cuts him out of her life altogether and stops frequenting his coffee shop. Even though he explains to her he served jail time because he got in with the wrong crowd as a teenager and has completely turned his life around, she doesn’t care and will not talk to him. When a man who calls himself Charlie turns up at her office one day, the man she was in a long distance relationship with, and he tells her that his account was hacked and that he is very real, she decides to go out with him and when Frank sees them together, he loses all interest in her and cuts her out of his life.
After it comes to light that Charlie is a narcissist who likes to talk about himself all the time and how good he is at everything, with a little help and guidance from Tanya and her mom, she realizes that Frank was always the right man for her but because she spent most of her adult life utilizing a checklist that any man in her life had to adhere to, and because Frank didn’t qualify as he spent time behind bars, she quickly comprehends that she shouldn’t have been living her life according to the list, rather, she just needed to follow her heart because nobody is perfect. In the end, Frank and Danica give each other a second chance and live happily ever after.
While I am all for rom-coms, and because I am a big romantic at heart, I love watching films where we know that two characters are meant to be together but they don’t realize it at first and slowly come to the realization that they were meant to be. The problem with “Nobody’s Fool” is that our main protagonist, Danica, is so unlikeable, when Frank finally gives her a second chance at the end of the movie, you really want him to close the door in her face because she is not a good person. Even when she sees Frank counseling newly-paroled prisoners, trying to give them some guidance as they re-enter society, and given the fact that he holds AA meetings in his coffee shop after hours and leads the group every week, admitting to his own shortcomings as a human being, none of this seems to get through Danica’s thick skull. It’s only after she discovers that Charlie was not the perfect man she had painted him to be and that everyone in her life had to point out that Frank was a good man, in spite of his faults, that she finally discerns this and caves in. She didn’t come to the realization by herself, it had to be drilled into her by her family and friends before she could see the light and if it takes this much insistence and advocacy at everyone else’s perseverance, then she doesn’t deserve him.
Tiffany Haddish plays Tanya as a hard-nosed ex-con who won’t take crap from anyone, especially her own sister and because she was locked up for five years, she is in a constant state of horniness and hits on any and every man who passes within her vicinity. Whoopi Goldberg is wasted in a glorified cameo and I was half expecting Madea to turn up and even though I despise her character, I think her appearance would have made “Nobody’s Fool” far more enjoyable.
Available on Blu-ray Combo Pack & DVD February 12th
