On Tyler Perry: Why Can't You Be Better?

I feel a certain way about TP: not good

It's been stated, but rarely said that he's just not a good filmmaker. It's unfortunate, because he has a pretty large audience. The problem is that his audience, according to most, doesn't care about the quality of his storytelling, but that he's telling stories.

Tyler Perry is essentially George Lucas to a lot of church-going ladies. In this sense, the Madea movies are his original trilogy.

He tries to appeal to the people who are buying tickets to his show and he succeeds handily. Hell, I've seen all of his movies and I see his appeal. He has strong Black women, the importance of family, the importance of purpose, and a drive for being genuine. I'll clarify that I've seen almost all of his movies. Some, because they were fairly entertaining and some because I really wanted to understand the guy telling these stories.

I won't go into a piece-by-piece exploration of these stories, but what I'd cover I'e already covered in an earlier post: His stuff is well-trodden territory.

• women who leave men
• women who need a "good man"
• women who need Jesus
• everything is solved with a gun
• everything needs generic "advice"
• children need "discipline"
• a woman needs a strong man
• a man needs a "good" woman
• sometimes you need a good lesson
• you reap what you sow

I'll tell you that the last 4 are the ones that people tend to agree to, but the problem is that the way he displays is would seems like something from before 1940. Let me chop those 4 specific places up:

1. A woman needs a strong man: TP has either whole-heartedly proven this by disproving this. His character, Madea, is literally the antithesis of this. She's built like TP, a 6'3" 240lb guy who carries a pistol around. Madea also doesn't take any shit. Maybe all men are assholes, but he took the premise and ran with it to build an empire. It makes me cringe to watch it for a number of reasons. It's patronizing and not especially funny. Basically, it's too simple. The loud, brash black woman with a gun is a well-trodden trope. And yeah, sometimes you'll see that, but it leaves a sour taste and perpetuates a shitty stereotype. I'd also throw in that a lot of his other female characters are shown as meek and when they step outside of that box they get punished for it via: abandonment, disease,  divorce, or even death. The sad part is that a lot of actresses who are really great have *only* this guy to go to for film work. Which is shitty, because I'd love to see Angela Basset do something more worth her talent and I don't mean Strange Days
2. A man needs a "good" woman: Good is a really subjective term, because like I said, he paints a good woman in one way. It's *lazy* and not well-thought out. I don't think he wants to explore the depths of the human experience, not because it's too hard, but because it's simpler to paint a picture that's easy to nod in agreement with. These guys are usually one-dimensional. They're portrayed as all-good or all-evil. The characters will be the God-fearing blue-collar man or the white-shoe lawyer who's an asshole. I mean, come on. Vapid meets vapid and it doesn't really mete itself out. There's nothing really meaningful happening in a *meaningful* way. 
3. Sometimes you need a good lesson: It's usually the woman, standing up for herself, who gets tossed out. The woman who steps out gets punished harshly. The man who treats his wife not shitty is seen as a saint. He's got a Madonna/whore complex that suggests the guy doesn't know how to look deeper in a situation. True story: I had a family friend whose dad cheated on his wife. He confessed to the wife, and for the next 10 years, the wife would randomly punch him in the face to pay him back for what happened. I always laughed at that, but it had real consequences. It led to real conversations that I'd overhear while me and the friend played PS1 games in his rec room. That was real as hell. They hashed it out over a decade and eventually got to a better place. I'm not advocating that as a solution, but it's easier than what I see in the guys movie. Tyler doesn't have real, he has staged

Ultimately, he's got his voice out there, which I can respect, but it's a shitty voice. It's a boring voice. I'd love to see him make something that takes time and craft, but when you're on a yearly schedule to put out *something* it's not always going to be good. Woody Allen is on that schedule, but his batting average is well over .500. Tyler Perry doesn't even break the Mendoza Line (.200)

He's a bad filmmaker/writer:

• Madea is like a less funny version of Big Momma's House/ The Nutty Professor
• Why Did I get Married 1 and Too? Boring versions of The Big Chill where everyone's lives are pretty on the surface and a mess when you scratch the surface
• The only film he made a decent pass at? For Colored Girls When the Rainbow is Not Enough
• The only great film he has his hands in? Precious, but he only put up some money for it

Hes a bad actor:

• He's in all of his movies, but is more wooden than Pinnochio. Give it a good look if you want to groan
• He was in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek as one of the admirals on earth. When I saw it in the theatres I audibly groaned. I saw another person do the same
• He was in the latest Alex Cross movie, replacing Morgan Freeman. I'd suspect Morgan got too old for it, but who knows. They originally had Idris Elba in the role, which definitely would've been better for a lame movie. Ultimately it turned into a pile of dogshit.

Ultimately, the guy isn't good at what he does, but he's successful at marketing it. Great. Maybe that talent could be used to produce movies by better filmmakers. There are those filmmakers out there, despite Hollywood not caring about black dollars or women dollars or old dollars. 

It's just sad that this is *the guy* who's the main black filmmaker out there. Spike Lee is busy in documentary land and teaching. The Hudlin Brothers are in Hollywood jail after that Johnny Depp movie From Hell. Kasi Lemmons made one and was done. John Singleton flamed out after Boyz in the Hood. Keenan Ivory Wayans just does (shitty) comedy movies, which has it's place, but Scary Movie just isn't funny at all. 

Raspberries. I'm gonna sit in the rocks and gravel and complain more the next time he makes a movie.