Last night, I went and watched Tyler Perry’s new movie, Temptation. I had been anticipating this movie for months and couldn’t wait to see it. The previews had seriously piqued my interest with its steamy plot.
The movie begins about a Christian girl living with her single mother somewhere in the south. This girl falls in love with a small town boy she’s known most of her life. Of course, they marry, move to a big city. Years later after both have graduated college, he finds a job as a pharmacist while she finds work as a therapist for a high end, match-making company.
Her fashions are that of any country girl who doesn’t read Vogue magazine or keep up with the latest trends. She is confronted daily about her fashions by “Ava,” played by Kim Kardashian. Judith (The main character, played by Jurnee Smollett-Bell) hates working for the company and hates Ava’s constant badgering about her wardrobe and hopes to open a her own Practice one day. However, her loving husband, Brice (played by Lance Gross) doesn’t have those same ambitions and wants Judith to wait 10 or 15 years to open her own practice. As it is, they are currently living in a small studio apartment, still driving a beat up old truck, and Judith takes the bus to work.
There 6 year marriage is filled with unhappiness for Judith, she loves Brice but they lack passion and he has become complacent with her. He forgets her birthday two years in a row. All the while, Judith is introduced to Harley (played by Robbie Jones), he is a multi-millionaire looking to invest in the match-making company that Judith works for and personally requests to work with Judith to come up with a program design to take the company global.
Harvey begins to take a serious interest in Judith, he misses nothing. From the color of the hair on the back of her neck, to the change in hair style. He is passionate and excites her in ways that her husband does not. Judith gives every attempt not to succumb to his flattery and charm but still she finds a need for his attention.
All the while, Brice and the owner of the pharmacy hire a new girl, Melinda (played by Brandy Norwood) to work as a cashier at the pharmacy. She is running from someone and this can be seen as one night she walks home in a large hoody sweatshirt and locks all five locks on her apartment door, then picks up a bat in her apartment as if someone was there.
Meanwhile, Harvey continues to pursue Judith, despite her marriage. He requests that she join him in a trip to meet with some investors in New Orleans. Before she meets him on his private Jet, she allows Ava to change her look. Going from Payless to Prada, she joins Harvey in this trip.. Alone!
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They site see after the meeting, and once they are joined back on the private Jet, they begin to discuss Harvey’s previous love and how she took advantage of him. He then begins to tell Judith, how if she were HIS she wouldn’t have to work, etc. etc. He kneels down in front of her, attempting to open her legs as she fights him off. After taking complete control, he then tells her that at least can say she fought him off. She then allows everything that she has been feeling these last few weeks to succumb her body and she makes passionate love to him right there on the plane.
They arrive at her apartment, just as her husband and mother pull up behind them. She proceeds to tell Harvey that she never wants to see him again only to find Harvey chase her to the front door as she gets out of the car, nearly begging. Her mother and husband interrupt, Harvey introduces himself to her mother, and unbeknownst to them, her mother Sarah (played by Ellis Joyce) can easily see that there is something going on between them.
Days pass, and while her husband has continued to annoy her with telling her mother their personal business, and she is badgered by her mother for not being a good Christian wife. She gets a phone call from Harvey where she hides in another room and tells him how upset she is that he would ignore her. Harvey tells her to meet him, hesitant… She does. They make love, and she makes him food as she watches him feed his drug habit with Cocaine. He offers it to her, she declines. After another nudge, she gives in and tries it. They begin discussing her marriage, and when she doesn’t agree to leave her husband, he gets very angry and tells her to leave. She immediately becomes irate, throwing food in his face and the remaining contents of her glass of wine.
When she returns home, her husband is asleep as her mother badgers her about her whereabouts. Where they get into a huge fight and her mother slaps her for mentioning things about her father, who is never before discussed in the movie.
As Brice wakes up wondering what is going on, he begs Judith to talk to him as she walks away from him to take a shower.
Feeling alone and lost, Brice goes to work and when Melinda asks him what is wrong, he tells her that his wife is cheating on him. (He saw her high as kite, being dropped off by Harvey to their home one night)
At this point, Judith is heavily into drugs and heavily into Harvey. She is different, she quits her job believing that Harvey will help her to own her own practice and she can leave her husband. Partying at Harvey’s home, Brice comes to the house to find his wife high and drunk, laying on Harvey with no shirt on along with several other women. Brice, forces her outside where she tells him that he is ordinary and she doesn’t want an ordinary man. She tells him she deserves extraordinary. She cuts deeper when he begs her to come home to him and he will drop it, and never bring this subject back up and she tells him in no uncertain terms that she wants Harvey and not him.
Brice immediately goes to Melinda’s house, in attempt to talk to someone about his ending marriage. Melinda comforts him as his friend, she cooks for him and they talk. As he begins to question her about why she doesn’t have a man, Melinda tells him that she contracted HIV from her previous husband who tried to kill her.
Meanwhile, Harvey takes Judith to her home to pick up her computer which she needs. When they walk in, her mother is there with her church sisters, her mother begs her to stay and grabs her computer out of her hand. Harvey snatches the computer from her mother, knocking her down and when Judith attempts to comfort her mother, Harvey drags her out of the apartment and takes her back to his mansion. There they get into a heated argument about him pushing her mother down. Judith proceeds to scream at Harvey telling him that just because his mother was a crack head that didn’t give a damn about him doesn’t mean that he should take it out on her mother. Angry, with crazy in his eyes, Harvey looks for his gun which he can’t find. Meanwhile, Judith is in the closet grabbing her things and Harvey comes in to see her about to leave him when he punches her in the face and beats her.
Brice and Melinda continue to talk when she reveals that her ex that she is so afraid of, is none other then Harvey. Scared for his wife, him and Melinda quickly get to his car to drive to Harvey’s house to get his wife. As he breaks down the door, he finds his wife bloody and beaten while Harvey lays passed out in bed. Brice picks her up and safely places her inside his truck with Melinda, and returns into the house with Harvey. He wakes him up, and rushes him through a plated glass. He proceeds to beat him when Melinda interrupts.
This story is being told by a woman, to her client. She is a therapist. She is Judith, several years older. She later goes to pick up her HIV meds from her pharmacist, Brice. Who now has a family of his own with a new wife and child. Judith is left alone with a disease she will die with. And the story end.
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After watching the film, the movie plot was great! However, the acting in the movie was that of a low budget film. It was NOT at all good acting, especially on Kim Kardashian’s part and some parts from the main characters. In addition to the bad acting, Tyler Perry didn’t do very well with the timeline of this story. Where he spent so much time leading to the punch line, he did not give the viewers enough or as much as he could from the ending. The ending seemed very short and it could’ve been much more fluid and gave us a better view. It left the viewers thinking that there was so much to this story that was NOT mentioned and left to interpretation. Tyler Perry has so many movies out now, you would think that he has learned from previous films. This film was poorly edited.
Out of 10, I give this film a 4. It was an awesome plot and he could’ve done so much with this, however the bad acting along with the bad editing brought this movie down significantly!
I would want to watch it again, but that is only because I love the plot and I love to pick apart movies, piece by piece…. But I don’t think I would ever purchase this movie.
Hope you find this as a useful read. Please leave your comments below.
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