The first season of Tyler Perry’s new Netflix series called Beauty in Black came out on the 24th of October 2024 and if you are planning to watch the movie, you better be prepared for an upcoming headache. Tyler Perry, as usual, has written the characters of the new series representing the women of the black community, but the excessive cursing and the sexual scenes do no good to the general plotline of the series, nor do they make it any easier to sit through with. This article brings you all the details about the movie and the reasons that made Beauty in Black a total failure for us.
Beauty in Black Review: Series Overview
Beauty in Black is an American television series based on the story of a stripper who crosses paths with the CEO of a cosmetic company and her fate changes. It was written and directed by Tyler Perry, an actor and filmmaker who is famous for creating stories with Black community representation and became famous after the Medea movie series. The movie has a splendid star cast that includes Crystal Stewart, Taylor Polidore Williams, Amber Reign Smith, Rico Ross, Steven G Norfleet, Julian Horton, Terell Carter, Richard Lawson, and Debbi Morgan. (The star cast just might be the only good thing about this series.) The first season of the series has 8 episodes and a Part 2 is also ready to be released in the upcoming spring. The producers of the series include Tyler Perry himself along with Angelique Bones and Tony Strickland.
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Beauty in Black Review: Reasons Why It Faced Criticism
Tyler Perry has produced some great movies representing the Black Community but this was just not it. All his films, in some way or the other, circle around women being tortured and mistreated, which is honestly very hard to see and digest. It does not even leave you with the “Oh, a tortured black woman came out of the vicious cycle of sex work came out of it stronger and braver!” feel and rather portrays a general idea of what worst things can a woman go through in the world and that too in a very upsetting way. The following are the main reasons that we particularly disliked about the series.
- Pornography: Well, Tyler is not known to produce very decent movies but the level of pornography in this particular series was just too much and seriously off-putting. In the very first episode of the series, we were forced to watch women flash themselves to the men surrounding them in a strip club and this is just the tip of the iceberg. We even see Kimmie, the main character of the series, get raped by a VIP named John who is Mallory’s husband.
- Poor Direction: Even the splendid cast of the series could not save it from its doom, and we felt as if the potential of the actors had been wasted. If they had had a better direction, the series may have managed to pass.
- Verbal Abuse: The only well-acted emotion we saw on our screen throughout the 8 episodes of the series was when Kimmie cried on her way to another session with one of the clients. Other than that, all we saw was characters yelling and abusing each other in their dialogues. Even the seemingly gold-hearted Mallory is seen as being just as abusive behind the scenes.
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Conclusion
Overall, we can conclude that Tyler Perry’s Beauty in Black failed to deliver the feel of women empowerment which was the main objective of the entire series. The series came out to be highly stereotypical and sensationalized, which actually managed to disappoint the audience rather than impress them. Yes, we do need more black representation in Hollywood, but they definitely need to be better directed than this.
