For Colored Girls - the Movie

Like last year's Precious, the new movie adaptation, For Colored Girls is often too hard to watch. It's hard to watch even if you've seen the original 1975 play several times, as I have. This is a movie that will leave you disturbed if not shattered as it graphically tells the stories of women dealing with issues ranging from rape to abortion to unsafe sex to domestic violence. It is also a movie about God, and the performance by Whoopie Goldberg of a religious zealot & mother is the most powerful and damning out of a ensemble of powerful performances. Dressed in pure white and turbaned like an orthodox Muslim, Goldberg's character has jumped over-the-cliff to God ("Elohim") to keep from going insane over her pain.Goldberg calls her "crazy as a bedbug" and plays her psychosis to the maximum. Critics will debate the merits of this play-turned-movie: USA Today panned the film while The New York Times praised it for its "force, feeling and tremendous sincerity," and this time the New York Times is right.