Straw
A single mother suffers the day from hell in Tyler Perry’s ludicrous melodrama.
Not a good day: Taraji P. Henson
Photo courtesy of Netflix.
Tyler Perry is not a filmmaker known for his subtlety, but this really takes the biscuit. A commentary on the pressures of being poor in contemporary America, Perry’s film takes a sledgehammer to a subject that demands a gentle hand. His leading lady, Oscar nominee Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), is stuck in hysterical mode throughout most of the film, a temperament in keeping with the melodrama surrounding poor old Janiyah Wiltkinson.
The opening shot sums up everything in one oppressive pan: a dripping tap, filthy kitchen, overflowing sink, bottle of penicillin antibiotics, an eviction notice, leftover food… And, behind the wheeze of a rotating fan, one can just make out the thump of hip-hop from another apartment. It is six o’clock in the morning and Janiyah is about to wake up to another day of maternal responsibility, dead-end employment and clashes with authority. In the first few breaths of Perry’s picture, Janiyah’s day goes from bad to worse, before we even have time to know who she is. While giving her daughter Aria a bath, she learns that Aria is being teased at school and needs $40 for her lunch money; Janiyah is then accosted by her landlady for being behind with the rent but still has a big enough heart to thrust some small change into the hand of an old homeless man.
Janiyah tells everybody that she will pay them what she owes – it is payday – which, in the viewer’s mind, is a red rag to a bull. She drops Aria off at school and promises to return with her lunch money, turns up at her workplace late (as a checkout girl) and is threatened first by a customer and then by her employer, is rung up by the school to say that Aria needs her attention (then and there), is given thirty minutes to leave her post, at school is told that her daughter is being taken from her by the Children and Family Services because Aria comes to school dirty and hungry, when minutes later she’s caught in a traffic jam in an unforeseen downpour, is rammed by another car, is ticketed by a police officer, is threatened by another police officer who tells her that he is “gonna find a legal way to fucking blow your brains out,” has her car impounded (at a cost, but luckily she is being paid today), gets back to work to find out that she has lost her job, only to return home to find all her belongings dumped on her front lawn in the torrential rain – and all this before the first twenty minutes are up. That’s before she’s accosted by a gunman…
It's all a bit much. We all have bad days, but only people like Janiyah Wiltkinson in Tyler Perry movies have days as bad as this. If it weren’t so tragic, it would be farcical. Janiyah is a bit dim, not a character that one can emphasise with easily, as she’s either staggering around in a trance or screaming hysterically. She really is awfully annoying. There are two types of character here: the wise and sympathetic black women Janiyah encounters and the cardboard cut-out thugs of Georgian authority. There is a sympathetic policewoman, played by the singer and model Teyana Taylor, who looks like a supermodel with a little too much cosmetic enhancement, while her partner (Mike Merrill) could be a model himself. The racist cop promises to “make her suffer,” as if she hasn’t already got quite enough on her plate, but then America today is not a happy place – and that’s before Tyler trots out the real tropes. The talk show host Sherri Shepherd is good value as a sympathetic bank manager, while the veteran actress Diva Tyler has perhaps the best line: “people don’t know how expensive it is to be poor.” And just when one thinks Straw couldn’t get any worse, the last straw is when Perry tries to have his Chick-fil-A and eat it by giving us two separate endings. The subject matter is laudable, but it deserves much better than this.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Sherri Shepherd, Teyana Taylor, Sinbad, Rockmond Dunbar, Ashley Versher, Mike Merrill, Glynn Turman, Gabby Jackson, Diva Tyler, Derek Phillips, Tilky Jones, Katrina Nelson, Justin James Boykin.
Dir Tyler Perry, Pro Tyler Perry, Angi Bones and Tony Strickland, Screenplay Tyler Perry, Ph Justyn Moro, Pro Des Ryan Berg, Ed Nick Coker, Music Dara Taylor, Costumes Raiyonda Vereen.
Tyler Perry Studios-Netflix.
107 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 6 June 2025. Cert. 15.
