Originally published January 20, 2020
There’s something to be said about Tyler Perry’s ability to get A Fall From Grace made. Any other director wouldn’t have been able to pull his new Netflix film off, for better or worse. Probably for better, because the film is bad by both Tyler Perry and Netflix standards. He’s capable of good work; hell, he’s even good in this as the boss of Bresha Webb’s public defender Jasmine. He puts out such a large volume of it that it all seems undercooked.
The film’s achievement is in finally giving Crystal Fox a lead role. She’s been an actor for years in some major productions, but she’s always taken a backseat to more prominent names. Grace is the first time Fox receives billing and she makes it count. She’s not given a lot as Grace, a woman arrested for killing her much younger husband, but she does what she can with it.
A Fall From Grace doesn’t give any of its actors much to do plot-wise or emotionally. It’s more of the same melodramatic fare Perry has been putting in his features for years, but with the added twist of being both a legal drama and an attempt at a Hitchcock-esque thriller. It’s not successful at being either. Grace tries to lead the audience along and deliver convincing twists, but the plot is so apparent and the script is so bad you can’t help but laugh. Sometimes, that seems like the desired reaction. There are more than a few instances where Perry seemingly knows the dialogue and is serving up a softball for the audience to react to.
Most of the script is Grace telling Jasmine what happened, but the “conspiracy” at the heart of the film is so obvious that it makes you want to fast forward to the part where the villains get their due. Everything is so obvious because there are approximately a million different points where the film stops, says “this is important and will pay off later” and moves on. Credit to Perry for actually having everything pay off in the end, but the film has zero subtlety whatsoever.
The film was shot in about five days and it SHOWS. The technical aspects, if you can call them that, are sloppy at best. Grace’s editing and cinematography are barebones at best. The cinematography alternates between long, single-camera takes that destroy any tension the film is trying to create and distracting, shaky camera work that takes viewers out of the experience. That and the production values are just…bad. Like, Lifetime movie level terrible. Extras hold forks but don’t eat and stare directly into the camera, asserting dominance over the viewer. Some eyelines don’t match up and the set design is only convincing because it looks like it was shot in the apartment buildings down the block from my house.
I think I’d watch most Lifetime movies rather than this. This was a slog.
Final score: 2.9/10