Easily Disappointed

by Erika Washington

I walked into the theater with some really high hopes for this movie. Who knows, maybe too high. The previews weren’t impressive and I didn’t hear a lot of buzz from any of the entertainment channels—in fact I don’t think I heard any. Not surprising since this is categorized in two of the least popular movie genres—Christian and Black. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed “Woman, thou art loosed!” so I had high hopes for the latest T.D. Jakes novel turned movie.

“Not Easily Broken” is the story of an average suburban couple going through average growing pains in their marriage. Each is at a cross roads of sorts, one person sees the marriage moving toward the next phase to include children and the other sees their careers to be at the top of their priority list. As with most marital issues, communication seems to be the biggest problem for the movie’s married couple, David and Clarice.

David, played extremely well by Morris Chestnut, is a strong man with a soft heart. A small business owner who makes time for young, disadvantaged boys by volunteer coaching a baseball team, he is kind, patient and full of faith. He could just as easily be a spokesman for Crest toothpaste….

The talented Taraji P. Hensen plays Clarice, David’s wife. I like Taraji as an actress (Check your local video store for “Hustle and Flow”) but not so much in this film. Her portrayal of Clarice was nothing like I imagined her to be. The screen version and the book version almost felt like two entirely different characters. Clarice is strong willed and extremely self-centered. So much so it was hard to have any empathy for her. I found myself wondering many times throughout the movie why David would ever want to be with someone that frowned as much as she did.

Another major conflict in Dave and Clarice’s marriage stems from Clarice’s mother, Mary Clark. Played by Jennifer Lewis, she is a force to be reckoned with. Bitter from her own failed marriage she brings that mistrust and resentment into her daughter’s home.  The movie does try to bring home that at some point we have to grow up and make our own choices.

There were a lot of great ideas in this movie. So much potential and great concepts could have been shaped but somehow it fell short. They should have spent more time letting us get to know the characters and how their relationships grew over time. I think maybe they tried to fit too much in into such a short amount of time. So many scenes were entirely too predictable and not at all what I would have had the character to do.

In my opinion, the main reason movies such as these don’t do well is the lack of real world behavior portrayed in the films. I was immediately impressed with the fact that the producers didn’t shy away from using profanity. With that being said, some may find the amount of profanity a bit off-putting, so I’m just warning you that it is there.

If the writers and producers of “Fireproof” and “Not Easily Broken” ever collaborated we might end up with an almost perfect film. All in all the best I can give this film is 2 gold bands (out of 5) and an “A” for effort.

Erika blogs about being a wife, mother, writer and knitter at Not Without My Coffee.

Picture credit goes to the official movie site. http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/noteasilybroken/site/