(There will be spoilers as well as outbursts of annoyance)
Mea Culpa is a Netflix erotic thriller directed by Tyler Perry. The film is about Mea, a criminal defense who takes the case of an artist who is accused of murdering his girlfriend. Spoiler alert: Zyair the artist never killed his girlfriend, he was framed by Ray, the prosecutor in charge of his case (who happens to be Mea’s brother-in-law) because he slept with Ray’s wife, Charlise. Eventually viewers find out that Ray, his wife (Charlise), his brother (Mea’s husband “Kal”), their mother (Azalia) were in on the conspiracy. When Mea begins to sniff out the actual truth they plan to kill her.
While this movie seemed promising in the beginning, in its second half, things went haywire. The movie turns out to be a fake murder plot orchestrated by two brothers to see if the younger brother’s wife (Mea) will cheat with the same guy (Zyair), like the older brother’s wife (Charlise) did.
There were SO MANY plot holes, I left the movie struggling to unpack what I spent two hours watching. Now, I have a thousand questions.
Tyler Perry if you’re reading this, you need to answer for your crimes.
Mea is played by Kelly Rowland. She’s the criminal attorney who takes on the case of the artist accused of murdering his girlfriend.
First of all, Mea partially saves this movie for being fine af, wearing the chicest suits that may make Jessica Pearson (queen of fiction office wardrobe) shake and acting the f*uck of that shabby script. Plus, she brought her own wigs. A win is a win.
There’s a scene where Mea confirms that her husband (Kal) is cheating on her. She finds out about this at the car park in Zyair’s house. Before her departure from his place, Zyair tried to kiss her, but she dodged it, so he fired her. Immediately after and in front of Mea, Zyair’s neighbour comes into his house and proceeds to give him oral sex. That’s when Mea leaves, gets to the car park and discovers her husband’s infidelity. The next series of events is mind-boggling.
Mea goes back into the house to find Zyair being ridden by his neighbor, the girl hops up from him and leaves without saying a word and Zyair immediately gets up to start kissing Mea. I’m actually so stressed. How magnetic is Zyair for Mea to participate in such abysmal sex hygiene, especially for a woman of her caliber. Like, girl, this man literally just exchanged fluids with an unknown white girl, and you’re letting him rub up on you like that ?!?!
They stop kissing at a point and take a bike ride to his loft. There, they start foreplay and have sex with a lot of paint. What. Is. The. Reason? Why is Zyair rubbing paint all over Mea’s body part? Artists in the house, is this how you people normally do? Chile, one thing’s for sure: the yeast infection will go CRAZY.
I just find it very hard to believe that a successful gorgeous woman, of all the men that her status allows her access to, will fall for her sex-crazed client accused of murder and with multiple allegations of aggression from his past lovers, just because he’s a fine boy. Tyler Perry really said it’s a man’s world, period.
Also, how convenient is it that Mea chooses to vacation in the same resort Hydie (Zyair’s dead girlfriend who’s not actually dead) is working in? *Bombastic side eye*
What we are all dying to know is, how much was Thee Kelly Rowland paid to participate in this tomfoolery ?
Zyair is played by Trevante Rhodes. He is the artist accused/framed for murdering his girlfriend.
Zyair’s contribution to the plot is his perfect chin, ass and believable acting (despite the amount of unbelievable things I witnessed). Throughout the movie, he’s mostly insufferable. And when he isn’t being insufferable, his alpha male persona is being cringe. Let’s get into it:
Why isn’t Zyair scared of the consequences of being convicted of the murder of a woman he supposedly loves? As a Black man in America accused of murdering a woman, he’s still living his best life— smoking weed, seducing and harassing the woman who is supposed to set him free to tell him he’s attractive, throwing sex parties in his basement, sleeping with his next door neighbour—uhmm, isn’t he meant to be in a corner crying and throwing up at the possibility of the lethal injection?
Tyler Perry is infamous for giving men an unhealthy dose of audacity in his movies, but can someone explain how the hell Zyair (whose life was on the line) can walk into Mea’s Law Firm to order her to ignore the growing inappropriateness of their relationship and come to his house for meetings? Isn’t Mea meant to be the boss here?
Kal is played by Sean Sager. He is Mea’s husband
I’m finding it very hard to decipher what Kal contributes to this plot…okay, I got it! He enlarges the disgust you will have for men who don’t provide in the household, but want to be treated as kings. One thing about Tyler Perry? He will pair a successful dark skinned woman with an unemployed leeching light skinned man.
Now the scene where Kal tells Mea not to take Zyair as her client because his brother was the prosecutor in Zyair’s case, and Mea refuses by asking him to choose which of the bills he will pay if she drops the job, *chefs kiss*.
Kal’s character shocked me die. He knows he’s in couple therapy to repair his relationship with Mea, yet, with his unemployed ass, he sells his wife’s piano to buy his mother expensive jewellery (Mea’s monster-in-law, btw). Then, he justifies his action on the grounds that his mother is dying when, in actual fact, he knows his mother is healthy. What sort of wickedness is this? This man even cheated on Mea with a childhood friend. Imagine doing all that and expecting your wife to stay faithful? Ahn ahn.
Quickly, the money Mea was sending for Kal’s mother’s (fake) chemo, where was it going to? Men will embarrass you, then try to kill you.
In one of the final the scenes where Kelly tries to escape from Kal in a moving vehicle, she takes control of the steering wheel from Kal, and rams into a big moving truck. While Kal seems to have died, she shows up the next day unscathed, looking fly asf in an all-black ensemble. Howwwwwwwwww?
Ray is played by Nick Sager. He’s Mea’s Brother-in-law and the prosecutor of Zyair’s Case
“Mea Culpa” is described as an erotic legal thriller. Kal is the prosecutor of Zyair’s case, Mea the defense attorney. Yet, there’s no single court room scene. Okay oh.
Let me get this straight, where did the brain matter and skull fragments come from if Zyair’s girlfriend was still alive?
Charlise is played by Shannon Thornton. She is married to Ray, and she is Mea’s friend.
Wow Charlise, you deserved better but I can’t lie, you were a very stupid girl. So you stepped out while married to a big scary asshole and you didn’t think you should confide in Mea, YOUR FRIEND, that she was unknowingly going to defend the man you cheated with and was being framed for murder by your husband?
If Charlise opened her mouth about what her husband was up to, it would have saved me and a thousand other people from this mess that Tyler Perry dragged us into. This is why she died at the end (sorry, not sorry).
At the plot twist scene, when Ray told Charlise to stab Mea since their plan was crashing down, was he trying to make Charlise the scape goat in case things got completely out of hand? I mean, this makes sense because it was her that set the family’s evilness into motion by being unfaithful. Please, I need answers.
Azalia. She is Mea’s Mother-in-law.
I’ve one question about this monster-in-law. In the scene where she and Ray try to trap Mea in Ray’s house, how did she manage to fall knee first directly on Mea’s phone AND break it with those bony ass knees?
These are the issues.
Hydie is Zyair’s girlfriend who he was accused of killing (she’s actually alive).
So what Tyler Perry is trying to tell me is that a young woman was treated like a queen in a relationship, yet she chose to betray her lover and be a pawn to one of his enemies by playing dead and framing him for her murder? Okay, Mr. Perry, maybe that would have been a tiny bit believable if Hydie had done it for an insane amount of money, which would have set her up for life.
But no, Tyler wants us to believe that Hydie (with her silly 5 seconds of screen time) chose to betray Zyair, abandon the comfort of his loft, wallet and chiseled body, just to leave America and resume life in a resort as a servant to rich folks. Enough is enough!
In conclusion, while “Mea Culpa” was entertaining, I need Tyler Perry to PLEASE be for real.
