Tyler Perry's Good Deeds

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A successful; wealthy businessman; Wesley Deeds (Tyler Perry) has always done what's expected of him; whether it's assuming the helm of his father's company; tolerating his brother's misbehavior at the office or planning to marry his beautiful but restless fiancAe; Natalie (Gabrielle Union). But Wesley is jolted out of his predictable routine when he meets Lindsey (Thandie Newton); a down-on-her-luck single mother who works on the cleaning crew in his office building. When he offers to help her get back on her feet; the chance encounter with someone so far outside his usual circle ignites something in Wesley. This one good deed may finally spark his courage to exchange the life that's expected of him for the life he's always really wanted.

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Tyler Perry steps away from his popular character Madea to play a very different role, and the risk pays off. In Good Deeds, Perry plays Wesley Deeds, the son of a successful software magnate who's ended up running his father's company along with his undependable brother (Brian White, I Can Do Bad All by Myself). He's engaged to marry Natalie (Gabrielle Union, Bring It On) in what promises to be a comfortable but dull relationship. By chance in his office building he meets a cleaning woman named Lindsey (Thandie Newton, Crash), a single mother whose life is falling apart--and in trying to help her, he discovers that the life he's leading will never bring him happiness. Good Deeds suffers from a few overly broad strokes and stays firmly within the boundaries of the romance genre, but despite that it's Perry's most understated and layered movie. Newton is particularly good, grounding the picture in Lindsey's simmering panic, and her interplay with Perry has a lot of heart that carries the movie through some of its more fairy-tale-romance conventions. Union and Phylicia Rashad are also strong; White is a bit over-the-top, but his role is the most melodramatically written. Overall, though, Good Deeds unfolds more subtly than previous Perry films but is more emotionally engaging for it. --Bret Fetzer

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