Nobody’s Fool Parent Guide

It’s possible there is a good story buried somewhere in Nobody’s Fool; if so, director Tyler Perry didn’t find it. Instead of a comedic drama about sisters who learn from each other, Perry has served up an interminable 110 minutes of profanity, casual substance abuse, and unconvincing romance.

The film opens with Danica (Tika Sumpter), or to be more precise, with a side view of her generously filled bra. The rest of her makes it onto the screen and we see her dancing in various stages of undress until she heads off, fully clothed, to her glamorous marketing job. This glossy perfection is interrupted by a phone call from her mother, Lola (Whoopi Goldberg): ne’er-do-well sister, Tanya (Tiffany Haddish) is getting out of prison and Danica is expected to pick her up and look after her. When Danica shows up at the prison to collect her sister, she finds Tanya having sex in the back of a truck with a man she has just met. It all goes downhill from there.

Danica does her best to help Tanya adjust to life on the outside: she lets her stay in her condo and helps her get a job at the local coffee shop, owned by Frank (Omari Hardwick), who has a crush on her. Tanya decides, in return, to help her sister who is in a long-distance relationship with a man she has never met. Believing her sister is being catfished, Tanya enlists the help of a television show to expose the man’s real identity. A broken heart results and Danica crashes at work, gets suspended, drinks too much, and goes to bed with Frank, despite her very ambivalent feelings towards him. The two have a lot of chemistry and Danica’s attitude to her new lover is composed of a mix of lust and regret. At this point in the relationship, viewers might wonder if the relationship is a keeper. The cutesy montage backstopped by “How Deep Is Your Love” certainly ticks the rom-com boxes. But Danica is such a self-absorbed character, so concerned with outer trappings, and so fixated on her list of a dream man’s attributes, that it is hard to care if her romance works out. When the inevitable plot twist appears, apathy is the most likely response.

Not surprisingly, the film has numerous content concerns. There are over 95 instances of coarse or sexual language in the film, along with mentions of prostitution and various sexual acts which cannot be named in a family website. There are detailed portrayals of sexual activity, with Danica and Frank having intercourse in multiple positions and rooms in her condo as the camera slowly glides across their perfectly toned bodies. Substance abuse is also a problem – Frank is a recovering addict and Tanya’s parole forbids her from using any substances. But Lola grows her own marijuana and is constantly high (which is treated as a joke), Tanya is always on the lookout for weed, and Danica drinks heavily when she feels stressed. Add various threats of violent revenge to this mix, and you wind up with a movie that is not suitable for families, children, teens, or anyone who wants to find a film with positive messages.

In a supposedly touching mother-daughter moment in the film, Lola tells Danica, “I never met anyone who got everything they wanted in one person. In the real world, you learn to live with the tiny perfections you find in the flawed people you come across.” Moviegoers, too, can’t usually find a perfect film but Nobody’s Fool doesn’t even have tiny perfections mixed in with its flaws. The biggest folly isn’t looking for perfection; it’s buying tickets to this film and encouraging Tyler Perry to produce more of the same.