It is clear that Tyler Perry’s new self-narrated project “Mea Culpa” aspires also to be many other genres including legal, erotic, and psychological thrillers. What is hard to buy is the presence of any kind of thrill in this astonishingly poor and empty attempt at a straight-to-streaming genre. As a matter of fact, it is only the unwitting chuckles, and there are a LOT of them that make the film the least bit watchable.
The film is a squalid piece of trash that is unoriginal in the eyes of viewers. Mae Culpa is Perry’s movie, and he made sure the movie would be shown on Netflix. Somehwo, it is practically certain that there are audiences who will not care how ridiculous his story is. However, this does not absolve the low level of quality that we see in the course of the movie, ‘Mea Culpa’. Completely disregarding the essence of the story, what will destroy Perry’s writing in this case were forgettable characters and incredibly poor dialogue.
It is not a surprise that Kelly Rowland is cast to the role of Mea Harper, a defense attorney who cannot seem to hold it together anymore by focusing on her job as her marriage is falling apart. Her spouse, Kal (Sean Sagar) was rumored to work as an anesthesiologist until he got himself sacked for being drunk at work. And to top it all, he probably had an affair with Mea. In yet another unfortunate twist of events, Kal is also sickly over-possessive towards his abusive, terminally ill mother, Azalia (Kerry O’Malley) – a character that is so badly realised it gets worse each time it appears in the story.
As if things weren’t terrible enough, when she was at her law firm, an eccentric and obnoxious painter by the name of Zyair Malloy (Trevante Rhodes) approaches her. This art devotee is believed to be a murderer and will soon be tried by the District Attorney for his girlfriend’s death. The police have gobs of evidence against him yet Zyair claims his innocence. He wants to make use of the jury and so he persuades Mea to plead for him in court which she relents considering the damages. She is married to an unemployed man for God’s sake.
In every storyline, a conflict is necessary, and in this case, it comes in the form of District Attorney and others’ expectations of him. This is Ray (Nick Sagar), who happens to be a brother-in-law to Mea, and he wants Zyair behind bars to advance his career as a mayor. Naturally, this leads to numerous family squabbles and arguments, many of which begin shifting the storyline to new dimensions that are both predictable and nonsensical.
As such, in order to eliminate the discomfort of strong media presence, which also provides a good excuse to get them together, it is Miss Zaya who comes to Zyair’s loft to talk about the case. But as most reasonable people expected, the case is quickly forgotten and all became a game of seduction. Even though there was absolutely no sense of spark between Rowland and Rhodes, the grotesque useless sexual fetish Zyair starts pursuing this so-called ‘smart’ and ‘intelligent’ Mea.
This draws me to one of the many challenges that the film presents. Every single thing that happens in the film just diminishes the allegedly ‘strong female lead’ to be as dumb as a brick. It is very unacceptable how stupendously ridiculous character choices she makes, the inability to read the room, poor instincts, bad judgement overall- things just went south for meas which I assume isn’t what Perry hoped for. It is very clear as well that Rowland is in a lose-lose position as the material is so bad. She has no chance to give us the Mea that Perry has imagined in his movies.
All the remaining supporting characters and cast are not much beneficed either, and I do mean “NONE”. There was the lifeless Rhodes whom I described who couldn’t bubble up even a tiny flame of energy or charisma. Every other character has clearly been dialed up above the line- the completely case-loud Kal, the case-hard Azalia, and ascending superior-Prince Ray. Then you have Jimmy (RonReaco Lee), who plays a friend to Mea, one of the worst private investigators you would meet in any movie. But once again, we must remember that the cast has little room for maneuver with such a barbaric script. As for Perry’s directing style, time and time again, he exposes them the scenes where no perfect acting can save the day. ”Mea Culpa” is currently streaming on Netflix.
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