Reviewer's grade: C-
This time around, writer/director Tyler Perry plucks a few heartstrings with a story about a single mom with three kids who moves from the Chicago Projects to rural Georgia when her estranged father dies and leaves her a house that is so run-down even the roaches are on welfare.
Harry, the local high school basketball coach (Rick Fox, HBO's "Oz," "He Got Game"), has an eye on her "? she's Angela Bassett ("Akeelah and the Bee"), so who wouldn't? He also thinks her son (Lance Gross, TV's "House of Payne") has NBA potential, but the attention he pays to her family makes her wonder what's in it for him. It's the kind of complication that keeps soap operas on the air for decades.
Perry also tosses in some creakingly lowbrow comedy in the form of ethnic stereotypes and characters who are there for laughs rather than truth, but Perry's sincerity is obvious. The man is just not a gifted filmmaker. PG-13
"?Doug Bentin
