Film Clip: Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds

A conscientious, hard-working San Francisco executive (writer-director Tyler Perry), despite the fact that he has a fiancée (Gabrielle Union) and a hot-headed brother (Brian White) who’s making problems for the family business, becomes involved in the problems of a homeless young widow (Thandie Newton) trying to eke out a decent living for herself and her toddler daughter. Auteur Perry is at his slickest, and the movie is smoothly entertaining. Eventually, though, Perry is undone by his own deft clichés, and he doesn’t know when to stop; things dither away in too many climaxes and a welter of tears from all concerned. Perry is a little too subdued (a reaction, perhaps, against the over-the-top Madea, happily absent here) while Newton’s performance careens back and forth between abrasiveness and bathos. J.L.