I love Angela Bassett. She, to this black man, is the epitome of strong black woman, providing support for her man but not afraid to walk away if she feels in anyway disrespected. Her eyes flash with anger one moment and soften with tears in the next.
Her chiseled physique belies the emotional strength she has within. She is a woman in all her complexities, human in the most beautiful way possible.
And that's why I was happy to see her in a leading role, something Bassett hasn't had in quite some time, underservedly so.
In Tyler Perry's new movie, Meet The Browns, Bassett plays Brenda, a single mother struggling to raise her three kids. Bills are piling up, and she can hardly afford daycare for her youngest. And just when things couldn't get any worse, she's laid off after the company she works for moves jobs overseas.
Tragedy provides the silver lining. She gets a letter telling her that the father she never knew has died and she needs to come to Georgia for the funeral.
When she arrives, she meets Leroy Brown, who is given to wearing too-tight shirts and pants that look like they were made from multi-colored quilts, and his crazy family.
As with all other Tyler Perry movies, there's a message, or at least a couple of them about faith in God and importance of family. Perry has always managed to mix in over-the-top humor with soap-opera drama effectively.
But he ultimately fails in this movie. The writing and direction feels rushed and forced. Some laughs are to be had, but many of the jokes fall flat.
Rick Fox is Angela Bassett's love interest, a former pro-basketball player trying to help her 17-year-old son improve his basketball skills for a shot at the pros while also trying to woo Brenda's heart. Fox, however, isn't the greatest actor, and the two fail to light any sparks.
And the problems are too simply solved in this movie. Now, no one expects realism from Perry, but we also don't expect to see one character get shot in one scene and run up and down the court like nothing happened in the next. We don't expect silly little obstacles in a burgeoning romance crop up that go away as easily as brushing some dust off the countertop.
When that happens, why root for anyone? You know things are going to work out anyway. Just give it five minutes.
The script feels as if it was undeveloped, and by the time the movie ends, you sense something is just missing. At the very least, you end up with stiff dialogue and contrived situations.
That's not to say the movie wasn't entertaining. It was. But after last year's much-better made Why Did I Get Married, arguably Perry's best movie to date, I came away from Meet The Browns disappointed and expecting more.
And Angela Bassett, my future wife if she ever divorces Courtney B. Vance (not likely at all), deserves better.
2 comments:
My son and I viewed Meet the Browns on its opening day 3/21/08 and found it to be disappointing as well.
Perhaps Tyler needs some "down time" to regroup and come up with better content and depth to the characters portrayed.
There were a few laughs but my son and I found that the funniest moments were the clips that advertised the film and the "out takes" at the end of the film.
No doubt Tyler is a talented writer and producer but this one fell short of those capablities we've all come to expect from him.
I have not seen Meet the Browns and probably will not for a while. I have seen all of Tyler Perry's stage play DVDs. I liked the stage play version of Why Did I Get Married better than the movie, but I liked the movie version of Diary of A Mad Black Woman much better than the play. Maybe it is a matter of balancing the comedy and timing between what a stage play requires and what a movie requires. I wonder what a completely fresh (not based on a stage play he wrote before) Tyler Perry movie would look like. Having both makes it too easy to compare, and I think Mr. Perry may feel obligated to keep in elements of the plays that do not necessarily translate to screen.
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