VEERING wildly from romance to melodrama to crude farce, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” plays like an unwieldy mishmash of “Big Momma’s House,” “An Unmarried Woman” and “The Burning Bed,” with lots of gospel music thrown in.

It’s the first film based on the plays of Tyler Perry, which have been wildly popular on the urban theater circuit and on DVD.

Perry reportedly personally put up half the $5.4 million budget for “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” which he wrote, produced and composed the music for – and in which he plays three roles.

The film ostensibly stars Kimberly Elise, a talented actress who’s been less than lucky in her choice of roles: Besides the FBI agent love interest in last year’s unfortunate remake of “The Manchurian Candidate,” she was in the surprise hit “Woman Thou Are Loosed,” based on another you-go-girl theater hit that Perry reportedly had a hand in bringing to the stage.

Elise plays the beautiful Helen, a classy trophy wife who is dumped by her high-powered attorney husband Charles (Steve Harris) – and literally dragged out of their mansion by her hair – on their 18th wedding anniversary so he can marry the younger Brenda (Lisa Marcos), his mistress and the mother of his two children.

But the film is dominated by Helen’s enormous, crude, pistol-packing, pot-smoking Grandma Madea, the signature role of Mr. Perry – who not only isn’t remotely convincing (or particularly funny) as a woman, but makes Martin Lawrence in “Big Momma’s House” seem positively subtle.

Perry, who is no Eddie Murphy either, also plays Madea’s horny, flatulent and fat caricature of a brother, Uncle Joe, as well as Helen’s comparatively normal cousin Brian, a long-suffering single parent with an estranged wife (Tamara Taylor) who’s a junkie.

Directed unsteadily by music video veteran Darren Grant, “Diary” lurches between low comedy interludes and Helen’s increasingly violent revenge against Charles, who ends up in a wheelchair after he’s shot by a client.

Helen also has “An Unmarried Woman”-style romance with Orlando (Shemar Moore), a fantasy figure of a sheet-metal worker who says things like, “I know you don’t believe in fairy tales, but if you did, I’d be your knight in shining armor.”

It’s all wrapped up in gospel music – and the message that all obstacles can be overcome through faith and forgiveness.

If that’s all you’re looking for in a movie, add two stars. Otherwise, stay clear of this mess.

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DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN

[] (One star)

Mood swings galore. Running time: 116 minutes. Rated PG-13 (drugs, crude sexual references, domestic violence). At the Empire, the Union Square, the Harlem USA, others.