This Hollywood Reporter story says Tyler Perry––whose most recent film, Meet the Browns, opened with $20 million but failed to hit number one as so many of Perry’s films have, and dropped off sharply in its second week in release––is looking to attract a crossover (white, suburban) audience without alienating his working-class Black base. And he’s got a foolproof plan: Perry’s next film, titled The Family That Preys, is set to star box office it girl Kathy Bates, who, of course, has proven time and time again to have a hypnotic lure on white audiences. I literally cannot hold on to a dollar bill if a Kathy Bates movie is playing in the vicinity.
In all honestly, this might be a smart move: if Perry’s broad comedy-spiked faith-and-family melodramas have a natural chance of crossing over to any white sub-demo, it’s older, middle-class women. But the makeup of the movies themselves is only half the battle. Even leaving race aside, if Lionsgate (for whom, as Carl DiOrio puts it in the THR story, “getting into the Tyler Perry business has been like acquiring a license to print money”) really wants to open up the appeal of these movies, they’ve got to make some changes in the way they’re marketed and released.
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Almost three years ago, after Diary of a Mad Black Woman opened to big box office but largely negative reviews (16% on Rotten Tomatoes, in spite of fairly sympathetic reviews from EW and the New York Times) Lionsgate gave up even screening Tyler Perry films for critics. This is not an unprecedented move for Lionsgate–the studio’s bread and butter is the kind of disposable horror film that opens and closes on the whims of teenage boys, who are generally not dedicated readers of film reviews. But it does seem unusual in terms of demographics: Tyler Perry is the only filmmaker I can think of who is making films for and about middle-class adults–people who do read newspapers, even if they don’t necessarily use them as a guide for cultural consumption–whose movies are routinely denied entrance into critical discourse.
Sure, the NYT will send a critic to a Friday matinee and publish a review in Saturday’s paper, but the very fact that they have to exercise effort on this almost guarantees that the review will be dismissive. Compare second-chair critic Stephen Holden’s review of Diary to Anita Gates’ review, in the same paper, of Perry’s next film, Madea’s Family Reunion. Holden acknowledges that Perry has a built-in (black, middle-class, female) audience that doesn’t include (white, middlebrow, middle-aged, male) him, and then procedes to take Diary seriously enough to consider the film on its own terms. Gates, meanwhile, finds Madea’s very premise suspect. “What is it about fat-lady drag that appeals to so many young black male comedians?” she asks, but doesn’t attempt to answer.
But could the tide be turning? It seems significant that mainstream critics are now going out of their way to defend Perry’s latest film.
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After explaining why Lionsgate declined to screen the film for critics, Armond White begins his review proper of Why Did I Get Married? on contrarian autopilot: “Most critics don’t ‘get’ Tyler Perry basically because most critics are whites who are not only clueless about Perry’s African-American culture, but unsympathetic to his particular expression.” Okay, probably. But isn’t that obvious? I started to wonder if old Armond wasn’t losing his touch.
Oh, but wait! Further down the page, he hits us Whiteys where it really hurts, by attacking sacred dude-com cow Judd Apatow. “Nothing in Knocked Up is as meaningful as Perry’s spectacle of men who must restrain their anger physically or his politically incorrect fashion show of women proudly, luxuriously wearing furs as signs of pleasure and achievement,” White sniffs. It gets better, when White insists that the derogatory terms most commonly used to describe Trapped in the Closet would be better applied to SuperBad. And I could go on. Just read it in full.
