Don’t confuse Nobody’s Fool with Paul Newman’s 1994 film. Nobody’s Fool, the 2018 edition, starring Tika Sumpter and Tiffany Haddish, is about an ad exec that may have been catfished while looking for love. It was one of many previews that prominently featured Haddish, who is a national treasure, but if I saw every movie that she was in, I would never leave the theater so I decided to watch The Oath instead and save this one for home.
It was the right choice in terms of thanking God that I didn’t pay to see Nobody’s Fool in theaters or waste time and energy going to the movies, but the wrong choice to even see the movie because the movie is dreadful. It is a Tyler Perry movie! Noooooooooo. I have seen Tyler Perry movies before: Tyler Perry’s Boo! A Madea Halloween and Tyler Perry’s Boo 2! A Madea Halloween so I don’t have a rule against seeing his films, but I didn’t enjoy them enough to make it a habit. Because this film’s production values were so sumptuous and slick, it didn’t occur to me that Tyler Perry was involved. He isn’t prominently promoted in the previews, and his name isn’t in the title. I didn’t know!
I signed up for Nobody’s Fool not only for Haddish, but because I was really invested in the story and wanted to see the luminous and elegant Sumpter in all her code switching glory killing it at the office then dealing with her messy, but real family life and trying to create a life of her own. Did I mention that she has the best smile in the universe, and if the world were a fair place, she would be in everything? She is so pretty and talented. I loved her as Michelle Obama in Southside with You. I don’t remember her in Bessie or Get On Up, but that just means she is such a good actor that she managed to be a chameleon in spite of being drop dead gorgeous. It didn’t hurt that the criminally under utilized in Glee Amber Riley would play her best friend and a side splittingly funny Whoopi Goldberg would potentially be riffing with Haddish. What could go wrong?
In spite of being deeply personally conservative, I enjoy bawdy humor, but Nobody’s Fool took it too far for me. It would fail the Bechdel test. Even at work, there is never a moment that any of these women are not thinking about getting a man or sex. It is too long a movie to be so one note. Haddish’s one gag is that she wants to have sex with any guy that crosses her path. So I didn’t find it funny in spite of the presence of numerous comedy greats, and it was supposed to be, which made the one hour fifty minute movie seem longer than it actually was, but that’s not all. It is a half-hour too long.
Nobody’s Fool is not really rooting for its alleged protagonist, but Omari Hardwick’s character, a coffee shop owner with a troubled past. He is absurdly perfect for someone with so many theoretical strikes against him. I actually wouldn’t mind making him the protagonist if we could follow his entire journey and how he was able to start a successful business when the odds were against him, but the point of this movie isn’t to be inspirational. Hardwick is a great actor, and you may remember him from Sorry to Bother You, Middle of Nowhere or Kick Ass, but even I didn’t get why his character would be so into a woman that clearly did not accept him for who he was, but I signed a waiver because have you seen Sumpter. Screw your personal self worth, right?
Nobody’s Fool is an elaborate way to chastise black women with careers for having unrealistic requirements for the man of their dreams when they should be going for the guys who used to have drug problems and a criminal record. Don’t be so judgey. Perry stacks the deck by making this guy perfect except for his less than perfect past. I’m sure if most guys with drug problems and a criminal past were that perfect, women would go for them. Hell, my over four decades on this planet suggest that regardless of race, most women will happily settle for a guy who still is in the midst of these problems, including pedophiles! Also the good sport award goes to Supergirl’s Mehcad Brooks for completely abasing himself as the protagonist’s dream guy. If I was a guy, I don’t think that I would be so eager to promulgate the image that if you have everything going for you, you’re wack in bed. What are you saying about yourself, Mr. Perry? On paper, Perry seems more like the dream guy than the coffee shop owner in spite of his turbulent past because to my knowledge, Perry never strayed from the straight and narrow.
Nobody’s Fool also has this problematic idea that just because a guy really likes a woman, she is obligated to reciprocate. I already mentioned that I don’t understand why an emotionally healthy perfect guy like the coffee shop owner would go for a woman so obviously disdainful of him. I also don’t get why she is the bad guy for not being into him, and everyone is badgering her to do so. He could be objectively perfect with no flawed past who adores her and wants to get married yesterday, and she could still be inexplicably not interested and vice versa and that should be okay. Better to find out now than after you’ve combined finances and had kids together.
Even though Nobody’s Fool is a Tyler Perry film, why does he not know more about black women’s hair? Why was the protagonist’s hair more messed up at work than after sleeping with a guy? The evil ex fiancée and his new paramour were the only light skinned characters. Ladies, do you sleep in matching bra and panties? The first thing that I do when I come home and am not expecting to interact with anyone is take the bra off.
If I had to compliment Nobody’s Fool, I enjoyed the opening credits as a series of text messages. It was cute, but will probably seem dated in the future. I’m always joyous when I hear Janet Jackson’s Miss You Much. Chris Rock makes a surprise appearance, and other than Whoopi Goldberg, Rock is the only other actor that genuinely made me laugh. Shout out to the Idris Elba reference.
I have friends who will watch every Tyler Perry movie. They love him. I definitely do not feel that way, but if his movies are more like Nobody’s Fool and less like his Halloween films, then I hate his depiction of women, men, relationships, etc. He does not have the courage to make a story about the one potentially three dimensional character in his film so he could engage in unnecessary moralizing about problems that only exist in his head and take a swipe at the black women who made him the success that he is today.