Tyler Perry Makes a Mockery of His Own Work

By Xavier James



There are two different people living inside of Tyler Perry. One is an arguably good play writer. The other is a proficiently messy screen-writer. And they're constantly at war with each other. In his latest movie adaptation of the play ‘Madea’s Big Happy Family,' the messy screenwriter won yet another battle. Yep, another round of stereotypical, exaggerations was hatched. Since he started, Perry has drawn so much criticism for his negative depictions of Black men that he had to back off a little. Now he seems hell bent on distorting and demonizing the image of Black women. Picking up where 'For Colored Girls' left off, 'Madea's Big Happy family' presents more over the top, unrealistic depictions and caricatures of Black women. It's unfortunate because for the most part, Perry's plays often carry a heartfelt message. However once again, that message didn't translate from the stage onto the big screen.


This time Perry removed essential characters that were in his original play and replaced them with oddball characters like Mr. Brown and the marijuana smoking Aunt Bam. The main character in the play was a cold hearted woman holding resentment for family secrets that happened when she was young. But the movie portrayed Kimberly as some evil, controlling bitch who bullies her husband and disrespects everybody else. The ghetto baby momma in the play was exactly that, ghetto. But in the movie the character was annoying, money hungry and hell bent on making her child’s father fail. The young father played by the rapper Bow-Wow, took care of his child but no matter what he did it wasn’t good enough.

Mr. Brown, a John Witherspoon knockoff, wasn't in the original play, but it was overwhelmingly clear that he was thrown into the movie strictly for his "coonery and buffoonery" as Spike Lee calls it. His character always guarantees the low brow humor Perry’s Madea movies are famous for. And the Madea character calling her self a “hoe” and going on 'The Maury Povich' show to find out if Mr. Brown was her 50 year old daughter's father, wasn't funny; it was said. It showed a blatant disrespect for all the real grandmothers in the world and validated Maury Povich's continued exploitation of the black community. It was absolutely ridiculous on so many levels.

'Madea's Big Happy Family' the play, was in order and honestly kind of inspirational. It had some meaning and tied everything together; including the characters. But this movie was sloppy, very sloppy and thrown together for cheap laughs and a fat pay check for Tyler Perry. And as usual it was done at the expense of the Black community. How long are Black folks going to support movies, songs and television programs that make them look like absolute fools? It is imperative that we learn the difference between someone laughing with you, and someone laughing at you! I was more then glad I bought my wife a boot-leg copy instead of taking her to the movies like she wanted. And judging from how fast she threw the DVD into the trash can, so was she! Taken from xavierjamesuncensored.blogspot.com