I "get" Angela Bassett. But I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand what makes Tyler Perry popular. I just don't get the racial stereotypes and caricatures. In "Meet the Browns," Bassett throws herself into it as if she were doing something serious and important, like "A Raisin in the Sun." The rest of the cast, meanwhile, thinks they're doing "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps." The better Bassett's performance gets, the more it underscores how this feels like two movies trying to be one. I know that Perry wrote, directed, and produced "Meet the Browns," but it still feels as if Perry bought the rights to a Lifetime made-for-TV drama and as an afterthought added the zaniest elements from his 2004 stage play.
One of the focal points of that play was a bombastic character named Madea, played dinner-theater over the top (like most of the characters) by Perry himself. Madea makes an appearance here too, with Perry also handling the role of Joe, but the film version mostly showcases Bassett and the fictional Browns (real-life spouses David and Tamela Mann). When the story follows Bassett's character--a single mom named Brenda Brown who lives in Chicago's projects--it feels serious and heartfelt. But despite Bassett's efforts to elevate the material, it also smacks of melodrama--a familiar story that heads straight for the emotions and thrives on stereotypes. Bassett adds soul and earnestness to her character, but that still doesn't keep Brenda from being a cliché. She's the typical good mom trying to make ends meet with different fathers for each of her three children, one of whom is a teenaged basketball star with drug-dealing friends. All you have to do is remember your Chekhov--If there's a gun in the story, either it's going to go off or not, and if it's not going to be fired, why is it in the story?--and you know there's going to be at least one crisis that's the result of those bad friends. But things are too hunky-dory in the Browns' world. Even after the crisis, we get a quick and total return to normal, as if nothing happened. Chicago is the violence capital of the world, lately, but the projects never looked so attractive. It's also the quickest undermining of a crisis that I've ever seen in a film. Another head-snapper is that Brenda looks and dresses awfully Marie Claire for a single mom who doesn't have the money to pay her electric bill. But none of it is enough to make you forget how familiar her character is, or how often we've seen the smooth-talking basketball recruiter (former L.A. Laker Rick Fox) who tries to ingratiate himself with Brenda in order to land to her talented son, Michael (Lance Gross).
Perhaps the biggest caricature comes with Brenda's best friend, a Latina named Cheryl (Sofia Vergara) who dresses like a hoochie and can't talk without unleashing a barrage of verbal attitude. Then there's the Browns. The over-the-top Browns. We get to meet them the same time that Brenda does: after her father dies, and her half-siblings send her bus tickets Georgia so she and her brood can attend the funeral. Why would she want to go, when she never even met her father? Well, her Latina friend suggests, maybe her father was loaded and she might get the money to solve all her problems here in Chicago. Then, in what's positively the worst bit of editing I've ever seen, suddenly Brenda and her children are getting off the bus in Georgia. Huh? It's almost like those old Warner Brothers cartoon jump cuts, where one minute Elmer Fudd grabs Bugs by the ears in the field, and then as he drops him the backdrop and scene changes suddenly so it's an interior and he's dropping the wascally wabbit into a big iron kettle. And what a stew these folks from Chicago have been dropped into.
The Brown siblings are a bunch of ill-mannered, borderline buffoons who bicker a lot and can't wait for the reading of the will so they can see what Daddy left them. Someone irritates you? Just push 'em on top of Daddy's grave at the funeral. There are some familiar faces here, like the always believable Margaret Avery ("The Color Purple"), along with Frankie Faison ("Coming to America") and the irrepressible Jenifer Lewis ("The Preacher's Wife"). If you isolate all of their performances, they're just fine. But put them all together, and it's too much to take, as so many family gatherings are. How Brenda gets the warm fuzzies around this clan is a mystery to me.
I "get" Angela Bassett. But I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand what makes Tyler Perry popular. I just don't get the racial stereotypes and caricatures. In "Meet the Browns," Bassett throws herself into it as if she were doing something serious and important, like "A Raisin in the Sun." The rest of the cast, meanwhile, thinks they're doing "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps." The better Bassett's performance gets, the more it underscores how this feels like two movies trying to be one. I know that Perry wrote, directed, and produced "Meet the Browns," but it still feels as if Perry bought the rights to a Lifetime made-for-TV drama and as an afterthought added the zaniest elements from his 2004 stage play.
One of the focal points of that play was a bombastic character named Madea, played dinner-theater over the top (like most of the characters) by Perry himself. Madea makes an appearance here too, with Perry also handling the role of Joe, but the film version mostly showcases Bassett and the fictional Browns (real-life spouses David and Tamela Mann). When the story follows Bassett's character--a single mom named Brenda Brown who lives in Chicago's projects--it feels serious and heartfelt. But despite Bassett's efforts to elevate the material, it also smacks of melodrama--a familiar story that heads straight for the emotions and thrives on stereotypes. Bassett adds soul and earnestness to her character, but that still doesn't keep Brenda from being a cliché. She's the typical good mom trying to make ends meet with different fathers for each of her three children, one of whom is a teenaged basketball star with drug-dealing friends. All you have to do is remember your Chekhov--If there's a gun in the story, either it's going to go off or not, and if it's not going to be fired, why is it in the story?--and you know there's going to be at least one crisis that's the result of those bad friends. But things are too hunky-dory in the Browns' world. Even after the crisis, we get a quick and total return to normal, as if nothing happened. Chicago is the violence capital of the world, lately, but the projects never looked so attractive. It's also the quickest undermining of a crisis that I've ever seen in a film. Another head-snapper is that Brenda looks and dresses awfully Marie Claire for a single mom who doesn't have the money to pay her electric bill. But none of it is enough to make you forget how familiar her character is, or how often we've seen the smooth-talking basketball recruiter (former L.A. Laker Rick Fox) who tries to ingratiate himself with Brenda in order to land to her talented son, Michael (Lance Gross).
Perhaps the biggest caricature comes with Brenda's best friend, a Latina named Cheryl (Sofia Vergara) who dresses like a hoochie and can't talk without unleashing a barrage of verbal attitude. Then there's the Browns. The over-the-top Browns. We get to meet them the same time that Brenda does: after her father dies, and her half-siblings send her bus tickets Georgia so she and her brood can attend the funeral. Why would she want to go, when she never even met her father? Well, her Latina friend suggests, maybe her father was loaded and she might get the money to solve all her problems here in Chicago. Then, in what's positively the worst bit of editing I've ever seen, suddenly Brenda and her children are getting off the bus in Georgia. Huh? It's almost like those old Warner Brothers cartoon jump cuts, where one minute Elmer Fudd grabs Bugs by the ears in the field, and then as he drops him the backdrop and scene changes suddenly so it's an interior and he's dropping the wascally wabbit into a big iron kettle. And what a stew these folks from Chicago have been dropped into.
The Brown siblings are a bunch of ill-mannered, borderline buffoons who bicker a lot and can't wait for the reading of the will so they can see what Daddy left them. Someone irritates you? Just push 'em on top of Daddy's grave at the funeral. There are some familiar faces here, like the always believable Margaret Avery ("The Color Purple"), along with Frankie Faison ("Coming to America") and the irrepressible Jenifer Lewis ("The Preacher's Wife"). If you isolate all of their performances, they're just fine. But put them all together, and it's too much to take, as so many family gatherings are. How Brenda gets the warm fuzzies around this clan is a mystery to me.
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