The Family That Preys, the latest movie by Tyler Perry, the mega-millionaire who brought Madea into our lives, opened this weekend at #2 at the box office and an $18 million take. This is not the strongest showing for Perry but apparently this is a decent showing since this movie isn’t built upon one of his stage productions. I saw the movie over the weekend and think it isn’t as satisfying as Why Did I Get Married but also not as derivative as those Madea-centric flicks. (I guess you can tell that a man dressed as a loud, black woman is not my particular cup of tea but I do recognize that many people adore her/him).
This is the first movie Perry has an interracial cast (Kathy Bates is one of the best things in the movie too) but even having white folks help drive the story doesn’t draw me away from the thinly drawn characters played by black woman. It looks like we can only fall into of these four categories:
The Pious and Put Upon Mother: She has God but no man and is hiding from life.
The Self-Centered B*tch: She’s ambitious, ungrateful and disrepectful to her husband and family.
The Hard-Working, Less Successful Sibling: She’s sassy and less-educated than her self-centered sister
The Smart Career Woman: She can size up a situation in a heartbeat (but we know little else about her).
Kudos to Perry for casting such a stellar group of sisters to play these role: Alfre Woodard, Sanaa Lathan, Taraji Henson and Robin Givens all have solid acting chops. And they were all good but they could have been better had their characters been written with some shades of grey to give them some depth and complexity. I don’t know about you but I don’t know many black woman who can be neatly categorized to the list above (or who could get away with talking to anyone the way Sanaa’s character did). More ridiculous, the notion that anyone could bait their significant other time and again with a line like: “You’re no William Carpenter.”
The brothers don’t fare much better, especially Rockmond Dunbar’s character, who is all but emasculated through 95% of the movie. However, Perry didn’t need to include domestic violence as a necessary turning point. Should we be applauding when a sister get slapped (whether her behavior is appalling or not?) Why couldn’t he have thrown a chair through the glass window instead?
All of that said I still didn’t hate the movie and do think it is worth seeing. Why? Because Alfre Woodard and Kathy Bates are a delightful duo who depict a friendship that reaches beyond class and race. And their performances will melt your heart.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
I have to agree on the violence. There was some BWs two row in front who actually clapped when he hit her. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe these BW were applauding that. What is wrong with them? Then one has the nerve to shout out, “Hit her again!” My heart sunk. With all the Black On Black Crime (BW being killed by BM), how can someone say something like that. I know its a movie, but their MENTALITY in clapping and shouting out makes me believe that that behavior is acceptable to them. I actually read an article where a BW told a BM that she couldn’t go out with him because he was soft. She wanted a man to put her in her place by any means even if it meant him knocking her upside her head. Thats what she wanted. CRAZY!! I just really didn’t like that scene.
September 16th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Thanks for giving me a heads up on the movie. I wasn’t able to see it this weekend. I was interested in how Tyler portrayed Black women in this film. Now I can look more carefully into their characters when I see the film next weekend. I do want to say that his film Why Did I Get Married? really was a nice balance of Black women. Those characters were easy for me to connect with. I found them to be authentic.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
My thoughts exactly on the movie! You hit every nail on the head, from the lack of depth of the characters to the glorified domestic violence, all issues I had with the movie myself. Sadly, I found myself feeling like a hater after hearing everyone else rant and rave about Perry’s new movie.
I have a lot of respect for what he’s accomplished thus far, and I appreciate that he has managed to showcase Black people and families in a more positive light, but I feel that his last few movies were lacking. I was somewhat entertained for the time being but was left wanting more.
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:35 pm
I saw the movie two weekends ago and the domestic violence scene is still bothersome to me. There were several options the man could have taken. He could have chosen to leave his wife, which he ended up doing in the end. Unfortunately, he slapped her up and over the counter. This was very disturbing and I know domestic violence happens all the time.
The other issue that was bothersome to me was that these people chose to “struggle” instead of using the millions of dollars that they had. This was a bizarre message. We have all read about African American people who have amassed wealth but have died in poverty. What does this mean?