Starring Tyler Perry, Jill Scott, and Janet Jackson. Rated PG.

Having conquered African-American film and television comedy, writer-director-actor-producer Tyler Perry now turns to soap opera. Why Did I Get Married? is the story of four couples in varying states of marital crisis whose joint vacation triggers massive, cathartic change in each of their situations. Full of earnest prayer, stilted advice, hammy villainy, and ridiculously acrid insults, the movie is maddeningly preachy, awkward, and stagy. But it's no worse than a genuine soap like Days of Our Lives, to which I confess a previous addiction. They even share a similar hook: the aspirational notion that romance is no less painful for folk who are much richer and prettier.

The twist in Perry's case is that his work is aimed at African-Americans, specifically those who'd like to see themselves as someone other than a thug, musician, or athlete. Perry himself plays a pediatrician who yearns to spend more quality time with his workaholic spouse. All the couples in Why Did I Get Married? are professionals, entrepreneurs, or academics (the movie's framing device is that one of the four wives has written an award-winning pop-psychology guide of the same name). Moreover, all 10 (the group is augmented, calamitously, by two singles) are given to sudden digressions on the nature and intensity of their feelings. Despite Perry's facility with camera movement, he keeps the focus, frustratingly, on the verbal complaints. Why don't you stay faithful? Have my son? Make more money? Deal with your pain?

You may be asking "why" too, at times, while watching some of the clunky exposition or Janet Jackson's terrible acting as the author. (Or maybe nobody could make that priggish pedant into someone sympathetic.) Conversely, Jill Scott is magnetic as the most love-damaged individual, an overweight homemaker with zero self-esteem. Scott's wan sweetness is charming even in this most melodramatic of characters.

Perry has said that he would like his success to lead him to working in collaboration with writers and directors like Martin Scorsese. On the basis of this wholly self-made effort, I'm ready to see him try that too.