SLB of PostBourgie confesses to going to see Why Did I Get Married Too?. Below is an excerpt from her findings
So there I was, yesterday morning, catching the four-dollar matinee in a near-empty theater. I wasn’t expecting much. One should never expect much from a Tyler Perry flick; that way, if you are surprised or entertained by anything, you feel you’ve gotten your money’s worth. (And three years later, you look back at his ability to get you to lean forward in surprise, when a wine bottle gets cracked over one of his characters’ heads and say, “That was kind of awesome.”)
From the first scene, I was treated to that trademark over-expositing Tyler Perry dialogue, though this time, it seemed even more grating, since this might be the first direct “sequel” he’s ever filmed. Though in a few of his other films, characters reappear, the WDIGM series is his first to have all nine principal actors from the first installment present in a second, reprising their roles and picking up their storylines a few years after they left off. As a result, there are a ton of scenes where actors are awkwardly shoehorning in statements like, “You remember what happened in Colorado…”
If you’ve seen the first WDIGM, you know that the films are split rather evenly into two parts: the marriage retreat and the post-retreat reality. In the first film, the retreat is cut short by the revelations of the aforementioned dinner table scene. This time out, the couples get to enjoy their vacation from start to finish, which means that the “shocker scenes” occur later in the film, after the couples have returned to the privacy of their homes.
In some ways, this is a little disappointing, as it’s always best when onscreen marital meltdowns are witnessed by the collective. But in other ways, these intimate arguments provide more nuance, as we’re let in on secrets the characters are obviously trying to hide from one another, as they lunch at fancy restaurants and band together to help a friend with an emotional breakdown (while secretly thanking their lucky stars their own lives haven’t spiraled quite this far out of control… yet). Plus, Perry manages to write his and Michael Jai White’s characters, Terry and Marcus, into a seriously crazed private scene between supposed marital gurus Patricia and Gavin (Jackson, Yoba)—and their reaction shots alone are worth the price of (my four-dollar) admission.
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