The Single Mom's Club is released today and critics have gingerly begun to offer their initial reactions to Tyler Perry's sassy new comedy. The film sees comedy master Perry stars alongside Nia Long, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Zulay Henao, William Levy, Terry Crews, Eddie Cibrian, Amy Smart, Cocoa Brown, Ryan Eggold.

The Single Mom's Club
'The Single Mom's Club' Sees Four Single Mothers Come Together To Support Each Other In New Tyler Perry Comedy.

The movie centres on a group of single mothers from different backgrounds who are brought together via a troubling incident at the school their children attend, which leads to the creation of a support group that helps all of them overcome personal obstacles and bond over their shared parenting trials. Together, they work through their problems, helping one another to find love again and getting their hectic lives back on track.

The movie will certainly strike a chord with anyone who has ever had to deal with a lot of responsibility on their own, or anyone who has an invaluable network of close friends to call on when it all starts going a bit pear-shaped. For a start, Variety praises the diversity in Perry's movie, hailing the broad range of society represented as a breath of fresh air: "a canny but never calculating gesture that lends the movie a far greater breadth of human experience than is typically reflected by mainstream Hollywood."

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Critic Scott Foundas goes on to earmark Cocao Brown's harried waitress Lytia as the movie's stand-out performance, "played with tremendous depth of feeling." "When the five women share the screen, they have an easygoing, improvisational chemistry, and their conversations feel candid and knowing on matters of work, motherhood and the ongoing battle for gender equality," he notes.

THR also praises Perry's inclusion attitude towards his filmmaking, but crushes the film with a disparaging review: "The only things left out of The Single Moms Club are genuine humor and emotion." Frank Scheck doesn't gel with the comedy's cast either, saying "The performers mainly flounder in their one-dimensional roles, vainly trying to wring laughs and emotion from the contrived proceedings."

The final blow is dealt by THR when it is remarked that Perry "blends melodrama [...] attempts at broad humor that mostly fall flat."

The LA Times didn't find much to enjoy either, yet believes that it's the film's broad diversity that makes it hard to find credible. Of the lead characters, Gary Goldstein says "it's a stretch they would ever become friends, even by mainstream movie standards." He adds damningly, "the lead actresses simply can't get past the single notes they're given to play."

"Too bad he didn't just spare us the awfulness of this flat and phony slices-of-life dramedy," he adds.

So Single Mom's may have bombed with critics but that doesn't mean that the average, open-minded cinemagoer won't find anything to take away from the light-hearted film. The acting and plot may not be Oscar-worthy but like the titular single moms of the club, the film is a lot more down-to-Earth giggles than pretentious cinematography which will surely be a winning formula at the movie theaters. The Single Mom's Club is out now.