What’s It About
A single mother navigates a series of unfortunate events, leading her down an unforeseen path where she becomes embroiled in a situation she never envisioned, finding herself at the center of suspicion in an indifferent world.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
Tyler Perry needs to stop making movies about Black women’s pain. His new Netflix film “Straw” shows us everything wrong with his approach to storytelling. As a Black critic, I’m tired of watching our stories turned into endless suffering without purpose. Taraji P. Henson plays Janiyah, a single mom working multiple jobs to take care of her sick daughter. Everything goes wrong on one terrible day. She gets fired and evicted, her car gets taken by police, and Child Services takes her daughter away. Finally, she snaps and ends up in a bank with a gun, holding people hostage. The movie tries to show how the system crushes Black women, but it does it in the worst way possible. Instead of intelligent commentary, we get two hours of watching a woman suffer. Let’s be real – Taraji P. Henson carries this entire movie on her back. She acts her heart out in every scene. You feel every bit of Janiyah’s pain, anger, and desperation. When she breaks down and tells her story halfway through the movie, it’s powerful stuff. Henson deserves way better material than this. Sherri Shepherd also does good work as Nicole, the bank manager. She makes you care about her character even when she’s scared and trapped in a bad situation. The movie doesn’t waste time like Perry’s other films. At 105 minutes, it moves faster than his usual dragged-out stories. No unnecessary singing or preaching scenes that go nowhere. Where do I even start? This movie throws every single bad thing that could happen to a Black woman into one day. It’s not realistic – it’s trauma porn. Perry seems to think piling on more misery makes better drama. It doesn’t. The setup feels fake from the beginning. Everyone Janiyah meets treats her terribly for no good reason. Her boss is cruel. The police officer threatens to kill her over a minor traffic incident. Even school officials act like they hate her. Real life has bad people, but not everyone is evil. The movie was shot in just four days, and it shows. The sets look cheap like they just walked into random stores and started filming. The sudden rainstorm in the middle looks fake. Everything feels rushed and sloppy. Tyler Perry has been making the same movie for years – Black women suffering while everyone around them acts horribly. He seems to think this is what our stories should be. It’s not. We need movies that show Black women as complete people, not just victims of circumstance. Yes, we face real struggles with racism, poverty, and unfair systems. But we’re also strong, smart, funny, and complex. Perry only shows us the pain. The ending tries to fix everything with a twist that doesn’t make sense. Without giving it away, let’s just say it feels like Perry wrote himself into a corner and couldn’t figure out how to get out. “Straw” wants to talk about mental health in Black communities, unfair banking practices, and how the system fails poor families. These are important topics that deserve serious treatment. Instead, Perry turns them into soap opera drama. The movie shows protesters outside the bank holding signs that say, “Nevertheless, she persisted.” But Perry doesn’t seem to understand what persistence really means. Real persistence isn’t just surviving endless trauma – it’s finding ways to thrive despite challenges. The movie looks cheap throughout. Day turns to night randomly. The rain appears from nowhere and disappears just as fast. Character motivations don’t make sense. Plot points feel forced instead of natural. Perry’s dialogue sounds like he wrote it in one draft and never revised it. People don’t talk like real humans – they make speeches or act mean for no reason. Every time Perry makes a movie like this, it reinforces negative stereotypes about Black life. Hollywood executives see his success and think this is what Black audiences want. It’s not. We deserve stories that show our full humanity. We want to see Black women winning sometimes, not just barely surviving. We want complex characters dealing with real problems in believable ways. “Straw” wastes Taraji P. Henson’s incredible talent on a story that doesn’t respect Black women or their experiences. Perry clearly cares about making money more than making good movies. If you want to see Henson act, watch “Hidden Figures” or “The Color Purple” instead. If you want to understand real issues facing Black families, read a book or watch a documentary. Skip “Straw” entirely. There are better ways to spend your time, and Tyler Perry doesn’t deserve your support for this lazy, harmful storytelling. Tyler Perry has the platform and resources to tell amazing stories about Black life. Instead, he keeps making movies that treat our pain like entertainment. As a community, we need to demand better. Black women especially deserve stories that celebrate their strength, intelligence, and resilience. They don’t need another movie showing them as helpless victims of endless cruelty. “Straw” gets a poor rating, and that’s only because Taraji P. Henson refuses to give a bad performance, even in terrible material. Perry needs to do better, but based on his track record, don’t hold your breath waiting for change.
OUR RATING – A PREDICTABLE PERRY 4