Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, 2013.
Written and Directed by Tyler Perry.
Starring Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Lance Gross, Kim Kardashian, Vanessa Williams, Robbie Jones,
Renée Taylor, Ella Joyce and Brandy Norwood.
SYNOPSIS:
An ambitious married woman’s temptation by a handsome billionaire leads to betrayal, recklessness, and forever alters the course of her life.
Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor is the latest film written and directed by Tyler Perry. It is one of the few films of his where he isn’t playing his famous character Madea, and one of the few films where he doesn’t make an appearance at all. Most of Perry’s films tend to try and bring out both comedy and drama but Temptation, along with Good Deeds and For Colored Girls, is another attempt for Perry to try his luck with a straight drama. Unfortunately, Perry has yet to learn from the many mistakes he usually makes when it comes to writing and directing his films and Temptation ends up being another misfire to add to his collection.
Jurnee Smollett-Bell (Friday Night Lights) stars as Judith, a marriage counselor who has been in a relationship with her husband, Brice (Lance Gross), for nineteen years. She loves Brice but things between them haven’t been great lately. Things are always the same – she feels their lives are boring and she doesn’t feel like Brice would stand up for her. Judith starts to get intrigued by a new client of hers named Harley (Robbie Jones), a social media billionaire with a lot of charm. Harley comes off as a great guy and treats Judith really well, but she doesn’t know much about him and Harley may not be as great as he seems.
This is a storyline that we’ve seen many times before but that doesn’t mean this couldn’t be good – it’s just that this isn’t executed well here at all. Perry doesn’t have a knack for writing good characters, or giving them anything good to say, so it’s really hard to get invested in any of his stories. He also makes everything overly dramatic a lot of the time. Not that the subjects he uses in his films aren’t dramatic in their own right, but the way he writes certain scenes and directs his actors the dramatic parts just become too ridiculous most of the time and it always takes me out of the film.
The structure here doesn’t really work out well either. It starts out being narrated by a character and then the narration completely goes away for the entire film until the very end. It could have been taken out altogether because it’s really only there for events that happen in the final act. There’s also a subplot with a character played by Brandy which feels unnecessary, even in the end once it finally plays into the story.
There are a couple of positives that I can say that the film does do fairly well. Both Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Robbie Jones are actually charming and give somewhat decent performances. The chemistry between the two also works pretty well and makes for some believable scenes. Even Lance Gross is decent here but it’s not enough to sustain the whole film. It doesn’t help that the supporting cast does nothing to add to the film. Brandy’s character is rather useless but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have tried to at least add something to her role. Kim Kardashian just feels like she’s playing herself and she can’t even do that well. Sadly, not even Vanessa Williams can muster up a good performance and at the same time her character feels underused.
Had Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor been written and directed by a more skilled filmmaker, it could have been a decent drama. Instead we get a poorly written film with a couple of okay performances and one of the strangest twist endings I’ve seen in a while.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Jake Peffer
Originally published July 24, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
