Diary of a Mad Black Woman

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

A very curious and very entertaining mix, the Labradoodle of inspirational romantic-comedy-melodramas.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A bad movie so over-the-top that at moments it's almost good - or, at least, more arresting than it has any right to be.

USA Today Claudia Puig

While the jokes are obvious and the romance formulaic, a good-natured sensibility saves the film from being too hokey. The individual parts may not work, but the sum remains entertaining.

Premiere Kevin Allison

As preposterously awkward, naïve and contrived as this movie is, it's still a curious sort of pleasure to witness-especially the gospel singing scenes.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Harris and particularly Elise give over-the-top performances that bring Diary to the edge of soap opera.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

This is a movie that falls short only because it insists on grabbing for so much.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Blows to the head are delivered with more subtlety than the message of Diary of a Mad Black Woman.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

As lousy as it is, Diary of a Mad Black Woman is weirdly fascinating.

Slate David Edelstein

Half inspired and half eye-rollingly terrible.

Variety Joe Leydon

An ungainly hodgepodge of vaudeville-style comedy, turgid soap-operatics, and joyful epiphanies of gospel-flavored uplift.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Diary rather sloppily blends melodrama and spiritual uplift with crass comedy, sometimes in the same scene.

The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden

In an awkward split-personality way, it works some of the time.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

The movie has a soul, and its good-natured charm may well win over the most cynical heart.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The stylistic discontinuities and pile-driver excesses can be off-putting for an outsider like me, but for fans this may well be part of the appeal.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

By the film's end, you feel like you've spent two hours rapidly changing channels between a WB sitcom, the gospel-choir segments of the "Ladykillers" remake, an episode of "Law & Order" and a Mexican soap opera.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The film is never dull.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

These characters, which Perry worked into the narrative from other stage performances, may have been entertaining in those venues, but they undermine the film.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

So oblivious to genre that it occupies its own special stylistic niche, if you can imagine such a thing as a romantic revenge farce.

Village Voice Laura Sinagra

Rote melodrama.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The film may be bad-and mad-but it's not predictable.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

An absolute mess with no coherent tone, story or point of view.

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

Part female revenge flick, part Saturday Night Live skit, part courtroom drama, and part religious tent revival, this movie never congeals into anything worth watching.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Sure, I laughed. Yes, I cried. But mostly I just wanted to throw up.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Cruelty, church redemption, miraculous healings of limbs and junkie relatives – all have their moments onscreen.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Veers back and forth between indigestibly syrupy romance and vulgar "ethnic" comedy, with healthy doses of Christian proselytizing thrown in for good measure.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Plenty of mad moviegoers will put this in their diaries as one of the worst pictures in ages.

Miami Herald Peter Debruge

Downright awful.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Plays like an unwieldy mishmash of "Big Momma's House," "An Unmarried Woman" and "The Burning Bed," with lots of gospel music thrown in.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The Grandma is not merely wrong for the movie, but fatal to it -- a writing and casting disaster... I've been reviewing movies for a long time, and I can't think of one that more dramatically shoots itself in the foot.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The whole three-ring circus winds up in a church for a redemptive finale, but by then, Diary has committed too many sins for even the most generous soul to offer salvation.