Tyler Perry

  • A Madea Christmas (2013)

    A Madea Christmas (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) Tyler Perry goes Christmasy with A Madea Christmas, heading to a small town that is having problems putting up a Christmas show, and to a newlywed interracial couple receiving their parents for the holidays. While the guests include two jovial white redneck parents (one of them played by Larry the Cable Guy) and one black mother, Perry makes an interesting choice in having the mother being the one with racist issues preventing her from appreciating her daughter’s happiness. There’s a Big Lie to unravel along the way (the white husband initially being presented to her as “the help”) and some perfunctory anti-corporate rhetoric to unravel in town, but the rest of A Madea Christmas is rather straightforward. Occasionally highlights include the comic upmanship between Perry-as-Madea and Larry the Cable Guy: You wouldn’t think that two comic personas would mesh well—but they do, and I have a feeling (bolstered by the end credits outtakes) that Perry was unusually generous in letting the other actor ad-lib some of the best replies. (There’s also an unusually witty scripted line in “When she had them dreams, was they in color or black-and-white?”)  Perry’s approach here is very familiar, with Madea used rather well in a supporting role that allows her to play the troubleshooter. The family drama is usually more interesting than the fights with other neighbours or the small-town attempts to put on a Christmas show. Tika Sumpter looks terrific as one half of the interracial couple, but other than Larry the Cable Guy, this is not a film that plays in elaborate casting. A Madea Christmas is far too often too blunt to be any good, but it gets to its Christmas-spirit through an unusual path, and at this point I’m such a Madea fan that “more of the same” sounds like a good deal to me, especially in the indulgent lead-up to Christmas.

  • Boo! A Madea Halloween (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) No one can make a case that Boo: A Madea Halloween is a particularly good movie. Even in writer-director-producer Tyler Perry’s filmography, it’s a bit clunky, far-fetched, obvious and trite. But I nonetheless found it fascinating—it manages to have a Halloween comedy for an adult audience without supernatural or overly violent elements in the end. It plays to a small-c-conservative crowd, but skirts the edges of having a comedy set-piece set in a church, and reinforces family values in its conclusion after going through a tough-love phase. Perry himself plays three roles, two of them the thesis/antithesis of what familial love means for the teenage protagonist of the film. Dismissing Perry’s films is easy, but they end up being fascinating in their own way. If Boo: A Madea Halloween feels slapdash and basic at times, it’s explained by an astonishing 6-day shooting schedule—that’s not a lot of time to finesse details, let along build some visual interest along the way or whittle down the film to its core. As Madea, Perry is not bad—and there are plenty of comedic curveballs to distract from some obvious messaging about fatherly love and protection. (It’s refreshing, in a way, to see the college-age party animals react rationally when they discover that the heroines are underage—the girls suddenly become as if radioactive to the fratboys, and that’s a clear sign that the film is not going to go there.)  It’s unfortunate that Perry’s writing can be lazy, or that the tone of the film goes everywhere without control. Of course, at this point in my exploration of Perry’s filmography, I’m essentially a convinced fan—not necessarily a member of his core audience, but someone who’s quite willing to play along.

  • The Family That Preys (2008)

    The Family That Preys (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) Anyone wondering about Tyler Perry’s early-film-career strengths and weaknesses (not that there’s been much of a change since then) can always have a look at The Family that Preys, a middle-of-the-road effort that does feature the usual highs and lows of his film work. On the good side, we have a heartfelt look at black characters, with an emphasis on female characters. There are effective sequences supporting a strong sense of humanist morality, religion and family. There’s often (but not always) a clear-cut distinction between good people and bad ones, with the virtuous getting their rewards at the end. He manages to attract very interesting acting talent, and his flair for populist entertainment is far better than most other filmmakers, especially in playing to his specific audience. His penchant for melodramatic plotting (in the neutral sense of the expression) makes for easy, sometimes even engaging viewing—it’s easy to sit down and be swept in the story, even as blatantly plotted as it can be. On the other hand, his excesses are also here—a lack of a clear theme that leads to an unwieldy, sprawling structure that barely sits down to work out its own ideas. The writing is not very elegant (that “memory card” bit is, wow) and the points it makes are not subtle at all. Even the film’s striking moments (such as a man slapping his adulterous wife, portrayed as justified, or a homeless person being revealed as very important) seem very calculated. The caricatural nature of the antagonists is often too broad to be credible (the adulterous son even booking the same hotel room as his adulterous father!) and you know within moments who you’re dealing with—a woman putting down her man’s dreams is obviously up to no good, right? And yet, The Family that Preys rather works if you’re willing to be forgiving. The cast certainly helps—Kathy Bates effortlessly dominates the film as a matriarch, and her rapport with a splendid Alfre Woddard is one of the film’s highlights even if their subplot seems contrived and out-of-place. Sanaa Lathan is wonderfully detestable as the female villain, while pre-stardom Taraji P. Henson plays her good sister, Robin Givens has a striking smaller role and Perry himself has a small role as a construction worker. The ending is a lot of righteous fun to watch, as people get what they deserve from an old-school moralistic standpoint. Blunt but crowd-pleasing, Perry’s films are far more interesting than their critical reputation (largely forged by movie critics outside his intended audience) would suggest. I’m having a surprising amount of fun going through his filmography, even when the films are less than wonderful.

  • Meet the Browns (2008)

    Meet the Browns (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) As is customary for early Tyler Perry movies, there are a lot of familiar elements at play in Meet the Browns: A single mother struggling to keep her kids out of trouble; a suddenly deceased father; a return from Chicago to the south in order to reunite with a family she didn’t know; a tall-dark-handsome romantic prospect with a troubled past; an ex that just won’t stay in his place; street gang drug dealing; and Madea for not much more than a cameo. In execution, it all feels slap-dash: the tone jumps from comedy to drama to romance, the film fails to capitalize on many of its assets (the house renovation, which could have been a powerful thematic device in other hands, is here completely glossed over) and the dialogue can be dryly ordinary. But that’s not necessarily the case throughout: For instance, a sequence in which the patriarch enumerates all of the deceased father’s “hoes” is their scandalous diversity in front of his surviving family is a delightful comic highlight. Angela Basset looks amazing and gives life to her role as the lead; and the morals of the film are in the right place. Sofia Vergara also shows up in a pre-stardom role. I did like the ensemble of characters quickly sketched in straightforward scenes, and the romance is crudely effective in its own way. It makes for likable if imperfect viewing, the kind of thing that works best in a series (as in: “Tyler Perry movies”) than by itself, where it feels slightly too small and incomplete. Case in point: The Madea cameo feels gratuitous and disconnected by itself, but is meant as a lead-in to the next film in the series. On to the next one, then…

  • For Colored Girls (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) Adapting a theatrical play that relies on the strengths of that medium to the big screen in a risky exercise, and writer-director Tyler Perry doesn’t make things easy for himself in choosing to impose his vision on a fiercely feminist work. You can certainly feel the clunkiness at play when the film shifts gears from a rather straightforward (if harsh) melodrama to flights of eloquent soliloquies as the characters give voice to their innermost thoughts. As an ensemble movie with many ongoing subplots, For Colored Girls gets both the benefits of the form and its drawbacks — it can boast of a stellar cast in Janet Jackson, Loretta Devine, Thandie Newton, Kerry Washington and Whoopi Goldberg, plus a pre-stardom Tessa Thompson… I mean, wow. On the other hand, with no less than ten lead characters, the development of the subplots can be abrupt and sketchy. Coupled with Perry’s intentional lack of directorial flair and sometimes on-the-nose writing, it does make the film creak in places, and the accumulated melodrama (which gets absurdly dark in places) flirts dangerously with unintentional amusement. The biggest irony is that the film truly becomes magical in its most theatrical moments, as the women give voice to the stage soliloquies and unload the meaning of the stage play’s original title for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. (You can read some of the soliloquies, but they’re far from being as effective as when heard from actresses who get the cadence of the words.)  If nothing else, the film will make you wonder if you can find and listen to the original. It would be easy to focus on the film’s structural and directorial shortcomings — there’s something in Perry’s traditionalism that feels out of place (it’s hard not to notice that the film’s sole gay character is a self-loathing liar who gives AIDS to his wife — yikes) even as the film is a powerful progressive work by itself. Some of the weirdness even comes from the original play — it makes sense for all of the male characters (at one minor exception with little screen time) to be evil and destructive, considering the intent of the work to focus on women’s lives at their lowest point. Still, I rather like the result: It’s a wonderful showcase for the actresses involved, and when the film takes flight, it does carry the power of the original work. Even a decade and many more black-women-focused films later in a far more diverse cinematic landscape, For Colored Girls still packs some punch.

  • Madea’s Tough Love (2015)

    Madea’s Tough Love (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) In my ongoing project to watch more of Tyler Perry’s filmography, I’ve been a bit too trigger-happy on the DVR recordings and that’s how I ended up with animated film Madea’s Tough Love on my to-watch list. To be clear — Madea’s Tough Love is and isn’t a Perry movie: He produced it, voices Madea and even plays her in the framing of live-action scenes, but someone else wrote and produced it. The intended audience of the film is a bit of a mess, as Madea ends up having to do community service and ends up taking over a community centre to save it from destruction. There are a lot of kid characters, but the tone (and Madea’s overall attitude as a disciplinarian) are more aimed at adults. Having the film being animated allows it to take flights of fancy in wilder sequences impossible to do well in live action, including a wild chase with hydraulic-powered cars. It’s all mildly amusing and perhaps revelatory about Madea’s character, but it’s still a blessing that the film clocks in at a slim 64 minutes: it doesn’t overstay its welcome even in its predictability. Still, I’m ready to get back to live-action Perry, even if it means enduring him in drag.

  • Nobody’s Fool (2018)

    Nobody’s Fool (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) My ongoing effort to watch Tyler Perry’s filmography took a strange turn with Nobody’s Fool. Just as I was thinking I had a handle on Perry’s approach (a pedestrian, PG-rated paean to traditional values as filtered through the black American experience), here comes a film that opens with a lascivious midriff shot and features Tiffany Haddish loudly rutting in the back of a pickup to conclude the film’s opening moments. Yes — upon verification, Nobody’s Fool is Perry’s first R-rated feature, and one that is associated with a major studio (Paramount) and with better-known actors (notably Haddish, but also Whoopi Goldberg, and a showy one-scene wonder by Chris Rock). In other words — this isn’t your usual Perry film, and Haddish’s typically exuberant presence almost bends the gravity of the production toward her. As a result, Nobody’s Fool often feels unbalanced: While Tika Sumpter does her best to lead the cast as a no-nonsense urban professional, Haddish steals every scene and is more often than not where all of the film’s R-rating material comes from. If she feels like an intrusion in Perry’s usually more mannered world, that’s probably not by accident. (Once I know more about Perry’s filmography, I’ll be able to confirm a suspicion — that her role in this film is not dissimilar to the studious transgression that Perry allows himself when playing Madea.)  It’s all interesting, but not quite enough to make the film successful. While there are bits and pieces of good ideas here (most notably its blend of rehabilitation, romantic comedy, and catfishing-or-not mystery), they don’t quite gel together satisfyingly. There’s a notable amount of idiot plotting going on, contrived to maintain suspense for far too long, followed by an obvious narrative cheat in resolving a romantic triangle by showing how one partner is suddenly completely unsuitable in the bedroom. Almost as if the film had no interest whatsoever in honestly resolving its own tension. Considering that Nobody’s Fool doesn’t have much in terms of stylistic execution, another rewrite would have been really helpful.

  • The Single Moms Club (2014)

    The Single Moms Club (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) For all of the well-deserved criticism Tyler Perry gets about his work as a writer-director, there’s a lot to be said about his willingness to feature female protagonists, focus on their issues and propose on female-led casts. Some will say that this is a winning commercial strategy for the kinds of films he makes, and while it’s hard to disagree with that, the results still speak for themselves. The Single Moms Club finds him in mostly-dramatic mode, avoiding the pitfalls of the Madea-led comedies to focus on five single mothers brought together by an incident of school vandalism. Forced together, they find some strength in leaguing against their problems. While this could have gone in several directions, those who are familiar with Tyler’s work won’t be particularly surprised or disappointed to find out that the result is more schematic and melodramatic than anything else. The problems confronted by the ensemble cast of protagonists are not particularly novel or wittily presented: Perry is into brute-force melodrama and one can almost see him schematize his characters’ issues based on a list of the top ten complaints by single mothers. The cast is largely but not exclusively black, with the five titular single moms being split in various ethnicities — and with a few class issues as well. Perry’s streak in working with good and interesting actors continues here, with Nia Long, Amy Smart and Terry Crews being part of the cast. (Meanwhile, Perry also has a supporting role as a likable character.)  The Single Moms Club is not great cinema — at best, it’s a serviceable daytime-TV film that, to its credit, believes in people acting kindly and has the decency to end on a positive note. (Although pairing up every single female character with a man undermines the strong-independent-woman thing that the film may have gone for.) For Perry fans, it’s a less flashy example of a routine kind of work for him — albeit one that does show his continued sympathy for women’s issues and his ability to work with actresses. It may not get much respect, but it’s not something to dismiss too quickly.

  • Vice (2018)

    Vice (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, December 2019) As a non-American US political junkie, Vice is my kind of movie: An exuberant, engaged, clever and uncompromising look at a contemporary political figure that makes no apologies for its critical viewpoint. Taking on the unusual life of Richard “Dick” Cheney from early struggles to the vice-presidency of the United States, Vice is a lot more than a standard biopic: Through various impressionist devices, it gets to discuss the decades-long machinations of the Republican Party in consolidating power for power’s sake, the perils of Unitary Executive Theory, the way Cheney masterminded his way through opportunities to get what he wanted, and his unrepentant assessment of his own life. Far from being a dry recitation of fact, it’s narrated by Cheney’s replacement heart and features several filmmaking stunts such as a hilarious end-credit fakeout, quasi-subliminal visual fishing metaphors, a satirical restaurant sequence offering political options “on the menu” during post-9/11 madness, a visible narrator, faux-Shakespearian dialogue, and focus-group commentary on the film itself. It’s been fascinating to see writer-director Adam McKay transform himself from a silly comedy director to an engaged, even ferocious filmmaker, and after the exceptional The Big Short, Vice feels as if he’s applying everything he’s ever learned to take on the biggest topic of all: political power. It certainly helps that the film is an actor’s showcase at nearly every turn: Christian Bale turns in a mesmerizing impression of Cheney, while Amy Adams is almost unrecognizable as his wife. Steve Carell makes for a surprisingly likable Donald Rumsfeld (wow, I just wrote that!), with several other actor/figure pairs along the line of Tyler Perry as Colin Powell. The impact is interesting: for one thing, the film is a treasure box of delights as Bush-era political junkies will be able to recognize real-world figures before they’re introduced by name. For another, it can be surprisingly humanizing: Despite their heartless agendas, both Cheney and Rumsfeld occasionally come across as sympathetic (I either didn’t know or forgot that Cheney had humble origins, while Rumsfeld comes across as self-aware and funny). I’m not so happy with the easy portrait of Bush as an amiable dunce with daddy issues—even in a film that prizes caricatures, it feels like a cheap shot and an underestimation of his abilities. (I suspect it’ll take a while before we get an accurate Bush portrayal.)  There are several nuggets for those who have followed political history closely—including an expected poke at the whole bizarre incident when Cheney shot a guy and got the guy to apologize for it. As a non-American viewer, the reaction to Vice was amusing to see—while the film got a much-deserved Best Picture nomination, it also got scathing reviews from the right-wing press and even some centrist outlets as well—almost as if people should be scared of a movie that dares make a political point, almost as if everyone had to tiptoe around Cheney’s political clout. I’ll be blunter: Bring out more movies like Vice. Americans need them.

  • Gone Girl (2014)

    Gone Girl (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2015) While I like director David Fincher’s first movies more than his last few ones (Seven, The Game and Fight Club are classics; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo remake less so), the world at large seems to disagree, his stature having grown steadily since the beginning of his career.  With Gone Girl, though, it looks as if I’m re-joining the critical consensus: It’s a terrific thriller, unsentimental and merciless with a lot of depth along the way.  It starts innocently enough, as a man reports the suspicious disappearance of his wife.  As the plot unspools, twists appear.  Many twists, eventually leaving characters as aghast as viewers.  Saying more would be a disservice, except to praise both Ben Affleck and especially Rosamund Pike for performances that play off their existing persona (in Affleck’s case) or their lack of it (in Pike’s case).  Fincher directs the film with quasi-alien precision, which feels just about right when Gone Girl reveals itself to be an acid commentary on marriage.  A genre-aware script by Gillian Flynn (based on her own novel) makes Gone Girl a terrific thriller, but nearly everyone involved in the film bring their best work: In smaller roles, Tyler Perry delivers a memorable turn as a mesmerizing defense lawyer, while Carrie Coon transforms a small confidante role into something far more interesting.  Still, it’s director Fincher who remains the star of the show, effectively presenting his set-pieces with a lot of technical polish.  Gone Girl may not be a pleasant film, but it’s almost impossible to stop watching from its intriguing opening to its nightmarish conclusion.  It’s just not (really not) a date movie.

  • Alex Cross (2012)

    Alex Cross (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) Here’s a useful spoiler-filled tip for filmmakers: If you’re making a good movie, you can get away with murdering your protagonist’s pregnant wife midway through.  If all you’re making is derivative trash, then stay away from those kinds of stunts, because all you’re doing is pissing off the audience.  So it is that Alex Cross, which is a routine cop-versus-psycho thriller up to its halfway mark, goes one plot development too far and murders both a sympathetic bystander and all audience sympathy at one stroke.  It’s not putting the hero through personal grief; it’s purely exploitative cheap drama, and it’s easy to recognize as such.  Before that plot point, Alex Cross’ numerous problems are easy enough to overlook; after that, the film can do nothing right and becomes steadily more risible as it gets dumber and dumber.  Director Rob Cohen’s career as a technically-proficient filmmaker hit an apex of sorts in the early naughties with The Fast and the Furious, xXx and Stealth, but his decline since then has been fierce.  Here, occasional good moments of direction come at the expense of a dull film leading to a terrible final fight where even the camera shakes and slow-motion seem to have been added in sheer desperation during post-production.  The script is the usual genius-cop-versus-psycho-killer shtick we’re see so many times before, albeit with a psycho-killer-for-hire who seems intent on self-destructive decisions despite supposedly being at the top of his profession.  Straining to find something nice to say about the finished film, let’s at least recognize that Matthew Fox is physically remarkable -all sinews and muscles- as the antagonist, while Tyler Perry is occasionally effective as the eponymous lead –if nothing else, he also has a significant physical presence, and he fills out the frames.  Still, mentioning the other actors who show up only highlight how disappointing Alex Cross actually is: Edward Burns and Jean Reno quickly show up, but have almost nothing to do –Reno’s presence of the script even quickly highlights an overarching conspiracy plot that is frankly uninteresting to revisit after the antagonist makes the fight so personal.  Ah well; Alex Cross (sort-of-adapted from a patchwork of novels by thriller-factory James Patterson) isn’t meant to make sense as much as it’s supposed to re-launch a franchise.  In this regard, let’s hope that the dismal results keep all potential sequels at bay –we don’t need another series of pure-formula crime thrillers cluttering the screens.