This writer-director-mogul has a multimillion-dollar empire, but his newest movie is just another disappointment.
Only Tyler Perry could come up with such a plot twist: four years after announcing an $800 million expansion of his 330-acre (133-hectare) film and TV studio; Perry cancelled the project because of a new OpenAI tool that uses text prompts to generate videos.
“If I wanted to be in Colorado in the snow, it’s text,” he said to the Hollywood Reporter in February. “If I wanted to write a scene on the moon, it’s text, and this AI can generate it like it’s nothing. If I wanted two people sitting in living room at the mountains, I don’t need mountains for sets. On my lot don’t have to put up some kind of set. Sit in here with my computer and do this shocking me.” Those fed up with Perry hackery must now be feeling bewildered as well.
Perry is unique among all other stars that have ever graced Hollywood – campy Madea comedy franchise lead player, Oprah and Lee Daniels’ production partner and co-star of Ben Affleck (Gone Girl) and Cate Blanchett (Don’t Look Up). However, writing and directing Perry does produce work like no other which could at least be started by an online generator – usually sent along these lines: “Black woman struggles returning into life from being abandoned by cruel Black man again”. Christian values are always paramount; hence, the inclusion of Madea -Perry’s gun-toting granny character- as well as many others. This formula has made him one of the most powerful persons within Hollywood having his own studio far bigger than any “big five” lots but Universal besides streaming deals with Netflix as well Amazon. Furthermore, content cringe also sums up very much about Perry family.
Over a week before the Amazon Prime release of his latest film, Divorce in the Black, we asked for a screener as per protocol only to be told that it would have to be seen by us with everyone else. Now that it is out, it’s clear Amazon PR tried to pre-empty this onslaught of negative feedback. A couple days after coming out, the Rotten Tomatoes critic rating is 0%. I referred to it as his worst ever film in my one star review.
Much of this can be attributed to Perry, who at 54-years-old is the first content creator among his generation of auteurs. He is a man who insists on taking sole credit for the most significant work within an industry that appears collaborative while deliberately excluding union writers as well as actors. He boasts about writing pages upon pages himself (often on his private jet) and delights in blowing through takes without break and treating work like a drug addiction. It seems so too.
By the same token, to watch a Tyler Perry film properly means growing more and more frustrated at unfocused camera work, terrible makeovers and hair styles as well as moments that are never earned. But it’s his love for plot twists that will leave you shouting; who is actually there in the painting if the girlfriend has not died? (Mea Culpa) Or Even How on Earth did Taraji get on that boat?! (Acrimony). Perry creates content like somebody who never checked the notes during production thus explaining why he has previously dismissed critics of his work. For instance, he told Spike Lee to “go to hell” after criticizing Madea movies. Not Another Church Movie was an attempt at parodying this formula but still flopped.
Perry is not aiming for a multimillion dollar project that could possibly be taken seriously. “The bigger the budget the more the risks, and I just don’t – for my way of storytelling for my audience, and the way we like to see things, and hear things – I just don’t think that it’s necessary for me,” he said before opening his studio in 2019. This group of individuals have given Perry certain degree of freedom concerning his artistry seeing that it comprises elements of blackness. However, according to Eric Pierson from University of San Diego, one should also consider what it means when Perry has been “the dominant manufacturer of popular Black images” in America over the past 20 years. His earlier drama Sistas had double episodes than Good Times (5 year old TV drama with 153 episodes which is still counting) (133).
This becomes even more distressing when Perry tries out concepts in his works or scripts without fully understanding them himself (like colorism, domestic violence or romantic love), turning these pieces into banal Christian moralism narratives strewn with negative racial portrayals. In Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor (2013), Perry’s unfaithful wife gets aids after an affair, and her husband survives with a new wife and family. In For Colored Girls (2010), Janet Jackson’s character contracts HIV from her husband’s infidelity with other men. He may not be able to take it but he is definitely judging you. Perhaps his only real talent is delivering these sermons sometimes while dressed in drag without pissing off his deeply religious Christian fan base. (Perry had said he would ditch the Madea character, only to wind up reprising her to help meet his Netflix obligation).
However, Divorce in the Black rose to No 2 on Prime Video’s top US streams after Mea Culpa made it to the top spot on Netflix. It is all very well for people cheering Perry, because not long ago he was desperate for work and sleeping in his car. Also thanks to Perry, another actor Meagan Good has just had the biggest payday of her career after featuring in Divorce in the Black after 30 years as an actress. Georgia entertainment industry has its backbone at Tyler Perry Studios that was constructed where there used to be a confederate army base. Meanwhile, as he pumps out schlock big five studios are making Avengers, Bad Boys and similar franchise films in one of his stages.
Therefore, rather than distancing him from his black audience, Perry’s conspicuousness in distinguishing between art and artist makes him more relatable to Black people who also face the same challenge of separating the two. (Hardrict features as Good’s ex-husband in Divorce In The Black while Cory stars as her business partner.) In Straw, a Netflix project that is yet to be released, Sinbad, one of America’s most cherished comedians, will also be featured; he recently suffered a stroke in 2020. Perry always knows how to support those creators who matter to black audiences most even if it is just about PR – so much so that he was among those who stood up for Will Smith after getting slapped on the Oscars night. What does Perry do then? He lets Meghan and Harry use his mansion before they get acquainted.
Tyler Perry is an American Dream success story: A black man free to make whatever movies or shows he wants. It can be irritating though. However this man could be better than human Content Generator.
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