Tyler Perry's Good Deeds (2012)

Critic Reviews

• Roger Moore, McClatchy-Tribune News Service

  The result is an overlong, flat movie in which he's hitting his "women as victims" theme a bit more lightly, but which lacks an edge and does nothing to keep us from guessing the ending, pretty much based on the title.

• Wesley Morris, Boston Globe

  Whose life, Wesley asks in the movie's narration, is he living? Judging from all the sterile office and apartment space and his mile-long face, I'd say Bruce Willis's in "The Sixth Sense.''

• Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

  There aren't a lot of laughs in "Good Deeds," and it could have used more of them.

• Joe Leydon, Variety

  An otherwise unremarkable pic that takes what feels like a very long time to unwind a drearily predictable storyline.

• David DeWitt, New York Times

  Good Deeds honors goodness, which isn't at all a bad thing, and it's not without moments of genuine feeling. But by the film's end, after watching a seemingly infinite number of dour close-ups of sober self-evaluation, I felt bludgeoned.

• Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

  Good Deeds, with its Frank Capra-gone-Good Will Hunting title, is lucky to have Thandie Newton, easily the most gifted actress ever to have starred in a Tyler Perry movie.

• Jim Lane, Sacramento News & Review

  ... smoothly entertaining. Eventually, though, Perry is undone by his own deft clichés, and he doesn't know when to stop ...

• Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

  In terms of Perry's oeuvre it's surprisingly light on the cheesy melodrama.

• Tim Brayton, Antagony & Ecstasy

  It's in the upper half of Perry's filmography, at any rate, both in terms of conceptual rigor and execution.

• Brett Michel, Boston Phoenix

  Tyler Perry is no Douglas Sirk.

• Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle

  The melodramatic film has numerous light and comical touches, and the performances are uniformly good. The film's pace, however, has the consistency of molasses.

• Jackie K. Cooper, jackiekcooper.com

  An entertaining film with Perry in the lead, but the acting honors are stolen by the supporting cast

• Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York

  A ridiculously redemptive finale negates almost all of the preceding dramatic tension and resurrects a cloying Richard Marx chestnut to boot.

• Sandie Angulo Chen, Common Sense Media

  'Message' movie lacks humor to draw in teens.

• Stephen Schaefer, Boston Herald

  Good Deeds has a Hollywood gloss very much in keeping with its San Francisco settings and attractive cast.

• Alison Willmore, Movieline

  [Tyler Perry's Wesley] is Prince Charming for a prospective audience of women who are less enchanted by rippling abs than by kindness and responsibility.

• Rob Humanick, Slant Magazine

  Perry's considerate plotting is deliberate, perhaps even overlong, but with an attuned sense of people's evolving feelings and relationships.

• Bill Gibron, Filmcritic.com

  decent

• Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

  Far more interesting in the context of his filmography than it is to actually watch.

• Thomas Leupp, Hollywood.com

  Drowning in tedious exposition, much of which is devoted to affirming the obvious.

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