The five women who reside at the center of "Tyler Perry's The Single Moms Club" are united by the fact that their misbehaving children have all been put on probation by the private school they attend. In response to this and other issues, the gals form their own support group to help them cope with the very real and very specific challenges they face trying to rear children on their own.
The women represent a neat (a little too neat, perhaps) cross section of modern America, culled from a variety of races and economic strata, differences that are ultimately obliterated by the common bond of single motherhood. The movie focuses on the compromises - financial, moral, personal and romantic - that these harried women have to make in order to get through life.
Though "The Single Moms Club" is slightly less cartoonish than many of Perry's previous films (no Madea in sight!) and it does offer some insights into the struggles facing such women, the movie, as a whole, lacks the verisimilitude needed to make the material convincing. For all the fine actresses that Perry has assembled for his cast (Nia Long, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Zulay Henao, Cocoa Brown and Amy Smart), the characters themselves lean too much towards the stereotypical and clichéd - the sassy, plus-sized black woman whose husband and two oldest boys are in the poky; the uptight, snooty rich white woman who's making her way up the corporate ladder and, thus, had her daughter through artificial insemination; the petite suburban blond with the hunky, albeit sensitive, next door neighbor, etc.
Perry himself appears, not in drag this time, portraying the romantic interest of one of the mothers. "Brooklyn Nine-Nine's" Terry Crews is also one of the men in the cast.
But it's the five actresses who rise, if only partially, above all the slickery and goo.
