#29 "Daddy's Little Girls"

Stats: 2007. Starring Idris Elba, Gabrielle Union, Tasha Smith. PG-13.

Background: Daddy’s Little Girls is the first Tyler Perry movie I saw all the way through. (I’d seen bits and pieces of Diary of a Mad Black Woman on television a few times.) I hated it and loved it, all at the same time.

A couple months ago, after seeing another Tyler Perry movie, which I loved even more than this one, I went on half.com to find it and discovered a seller that had a bunch of Tyler Perry movies for under $5 each. I couldn't resist :-)

Reactions: First of all, Idris Elba is an amazing actor. I didn’t even realize until I looked it up that he was both Monte, the loving, hardworking father in Daddy’s Little Girls and Charles Miner, the uptight, by-the-book replacement for Michael Scott on season five of The Office.

I’d forgotten just how vile the villains in this movie are. Most of the movie is just painful to watch. So why watch it? For the extreme love the main character has for his daughters and for the determination with which he fights for them.

Monte is a hardworking ex-con who loses custody of his daughters to his ex-wife, who is living with Joe, the neighborhood drug kingpin. Everyone is afraid to testify against Joe, so even though he has been arrested several times, the charges never stick. Monte turns to Julia (Union), a partner at an upscale law firm, for help. Of course, Monte ends up with custody of his kids, and he and Julia fall in love.

I thought things wrapped up a little too neatly, but it certainly was a happy ending. Of the five Tyler Perry movies I’ve seen, this ranks third.

Verdict: Keep