Wow! “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” (Lions Gate Films) has everything! Let’s have a round up: penis jokes, pot jokes, fart jokes, ethnic jokes and hilarious sexism? Check! A young black comedian (Tyler Perry) cross-dressing as a gun-toting septuagenarian? Watch out, Eddie Murphy. Violence targeted at the handicapped? Heck yes! Sounds like the ingredients for a great comedy.

Want more? You got it! An emotionally put out protagonist bent on revenge? It’s there! A vicious divorce? Yup. A junkie wife, estranged from her husband and children? Struggles for redemption? Forgiveness? God? Jesus Christ? Wait a second… Those aren’t the least bit funny.

“Diary of a Mad Black Woman” doesn’t have the slightest clue about what kind of a film it wants to be. I’m pretty sure that it was supposed to be an overwhelming, emotional film about the hardships within relationships and looking to the Lord for redemption and forgiveness. It is, after all, the story of a “mad black woman” – Helen, (Kimberly Elise) – picking up the pieces after a brutal divorce, finding solace in her family and a new love. But all of this is interlaced with vulgar jokes typical of films like Murphy’s “The Nutty Professor,” which prevents the film from having the emotional climax it actually had potential for. The touching moments make the comedy less funny, and the funny moments make it impossible to take any emotion seriously.

Take, for example, a scene where junkie wife Deborah (Tamara Taylor) tries to restore her relationship with good-guy husband Brian (also played by Perry. Seriously, Eddie Murphy, watch your back). This one had the audience rolling in the aisles despite that fact that, unlike some other parts of the film, it wasn’t even “laughably bad.”

This could have been a solid film, if it weren’t teetering on such a fence. There are a lot of directions it could have been taken: Perry’s comedy does stand out, so why not cast more actors with some better comedic chops to support him and turn it into a black (not to be confused with African-American) comedy slash revenge film? Or take it in the other direction…cast some better dramatic actors, get rid of (or at least tone down) the comic relief, and you’ve got a decent drama, in the vein of something like “Soul Food,” on your hands. But as it stands, the film is just kind of funny, but for all the wrong reasons.

“Diary of a Mad Black Woman” opens Friday in Washington, D.C.