Usually, in my reviews, I try not to call anything on screen as hating or a form of trauma porn, but that can be the least biased description of this film ‘ The Supremes at Earl’s All You Can Eat’ directed by Tina Mabry, a movie which manages to beat the viewers with chronical sadness and emptiness while adding a generous amount of soap opera that one’s bond to be don’t feel anything towards what happening in the film anymore.
The cast revolves around a trio of best friends known simply as ‘The Supremes’ consisting of Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor & Kyanna Simone as Odette, Sanaa Lathan & Tati Gabrielle as Barbara Jean and Uzo Aduba & Abigail Achiri as Clarice respectively which experience so much melodrama one would think the film finding it hard not to cast Tyler Perry as some sort of ghost writer for the screenplay adapted by the book of the same name authored by Edward Kelsey Moore.
With so much focus on the script to Mwabry and Cee Marcellus, expectations were set high until they were truly disappointed given that with every effort was made to include as much exaggeration, as much comedy drama elements as possible that it just appeared absurd in the end. I wonder how the situation is in theory, but it always seems that a character can die at a funeral with such drama that it actually manipulates the audience instead of registering as tragic: very sad, indeed. I expected it to stay in that area when this moment occurred, but it got worse somehow.
Then a character is told she has developed cancer, another learns her spouse has been unfaithful with a younger mistress and finally, we return to the scene of the child who is a victim of vicious decorating by a racist man who cannot tolerate the idea of his brother having a black girlfriend, before that person himself is murdered. These are not epiphanies of the protagonists nor are they aggravating events. Everything seems to be a rather forced sentimentality, designed to ensure that the viewer sympathizes with the overwhelming tribulations the main characters go through so as to elicit as many tears as possible from the audience.
There is a potential counterpoint arc that could have aided the plot & character development. Had all of these moments been treated with sensitivity and care, it would indeed have been too excessive, but it could have worked. Instead, Mabry treats all of these incredibly tragic and punishing moments within the emotional range of the events’ context, where the music accompanying each moment becomes more pronounced as though someone slapping the piano instructed the audience what to feel while the protagonists weather the darkest moments, individually and together.
In examining the film, we encounter the challenge. It is probably too much and two hours of dramatic tension presented in a fragmentary way is perhaps so exhausting that the viewer bestow this burden for eventual collapse at a lame thesis regarding friendship and the power of prayer only to.
Again, but such an alteration image is not the memory of the audience narratives, just as in the case of Woo’s ideals of the Killer that was made from early on in the film believing that it will attack such illusions by having a dove fly behind a cross in a ruined church.
The situation worsens still further when the movie includes an open ended running gag, revolving around Ms. Minnie (Donna Biscoe) trying to kill herself, in order to relieve the hysterics. Believe it or not, the ‘funniest’ moment in the film is just the burning paints himself trying to carry out her suicide plan incompletely and amusingly smashed her against the wall. Once more, is anybody positive that Tyler Perry didn’t contribute to the screenplay because this is something one would typically associate with his Madea films or other works of the same style?
All the characters are devoid of any sense of humanity as they are suffering from overwhelming drama, and there does not appear to be an end (or resolution) in sight. It is only in the last frame of the film where Mabry presents the notion that enough is enough which internally affords some minor optimism for one of the protagonists. But more importantly, that moment does not work because the spectators still have to endure the film’s fifth hysterical melodrama ‘twist’, let alone the dramatic death of the victim in the first place.
The cast really tries to work through the terrible material they have been given especially Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor who puts in an impressive turn that is even more emotionally charged than her performance in Ava DuVernay’s Origin (Kyanna Simone as Young Odette is just as good especially in a moment when she beats up Barbara Jean’s stepfather). But it is easy to tell where her character is headed because despite the actors’ pretensions to sophistication, Mabry’s script contains some of the most ridiculous clichés of all time with no attempts to subvert them and for a character who has always been ‘born fearless’, why give them true agency.
So even the last moment with Odette which seems like it would contradict her character is pointless because it is edited interspersed with a scene in which Barbara Jean, after her son is shot by her lover’s brother, embraces her lover Chick (Julian McMahon). What is the need for this when the Odette scene is far superior to adding a scene which does not change Barbara Jean’s arc in the least.
These silly creative choices, which abound in this film, completely detract from what could have been intriguing drama and are instead just one of the sickest forms of emotional manipulation I have seen since Florian Zeller’s The Son.
By all accounts, the animation style is stylized, but to a fault. Everything becomes exaggerated to the point that it eliminates the need to plot out the events. Rather, the narrative fits hand in glove with these attempts which ultimately leads to making its protagonists suffer more and more, the more unearned punishment.
Naturally, they will learn about the trials of life this realistic elements provide. However, when they are so artificial and forced, what are you really supposed to take from this film? Is it really necessary to deliver prayers at any given opportunity? Indeed, some would respond in the affirmative, while others will not. Nevertheless, there is nothing out of the bland “there is a plan” explanation which justifies pasing through monstrous 125 minutes of sadness.
I appreciate this cast and believe that they are quite good here, but The Supremes At Earl’s All You Can Eat is arguably one of the most excruciatingly tedious films I’ve had the misfortune to watch this year- no doubt this was quickly swept under the rug and dished out to streaming without any marketing whatsoever. Everyone here is so much better than the borderline sanity-shattering melodrama they are up against, which shows zero sensitivity and care to any of its subjects that it carelessly throws around. If Mabry had selected one or two strong scenes from the book and then framed the whole picture around it, it could have been worth seeing, but as usual the Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat won’t stay in our minds a week from now.
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