This is an abridged version of a review I wrote for Christianity Today Movies. To read the rest of this review, click here.

Tyler Perry is both a Hollywood anomaly and an enviable success story. Since exploding on to the scene just six years ago with Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Perry has produced film after film (including Madea’s Family Reunion, Daddy’s Little Girls and Why Did I Get Married?), often several in a single year, based on his original stage productions. Almost without exception, each of his films share the same attributes — they are shot on minuscule budgets, receive scathing to tepid critical reviews and end up raking in boatloads of money.

Oh, and Perry usually shows up dressed as a woman.

Perry latest film is no exception to this apparently established rule. Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns is not a remarkably well-written, directed or acted film. But Perry seems to have tapped into something very few other African-American filmmakers have and it apparently continues to guarantee his success — Perry makes clean morality plays for African-American audiences about issues that are not being addressed by mainstream Hollywood cinema.

Saturated with Biblical morality and the critical importance of family and faith, Perry tackles the issues facing lower and middle-class African-American families. Perry, who was recently named one of the most powerful men in Hollywood by Entertainment Weekly magazine and who knows what it’s like to grow up on the margins of society, has never been shy about proclaiming his faith as the only lifeline worth holding on to when times get tough.

In Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns, Brenda (Angela Bassett) is a single mother living in inner city Chicago where life is a daily struggle to keep her three kids fed. Usually indomitable, Brenda begins losing hope after she unexpectedly loses her job, her power is shut off, her babysitter quits and her high-school basketball star son, Michael (Lance Gross), considers selling drugs to help make ends meet.

Then a letter arrives from Georgia announcing the death of a father she never knew and an invitation to attend the funeral. Reluctant at first, but increasingly desperate for any kind of help, Brenda trundles her family onto a bus and heads to the Deep South. But if Brenda thought that living in the big city would prepare her for any sort of eccentricity, she obviously never met the Brown clan and their mischievous, crass Southern manners. Hysterical Leroy Brown (David Mann) is a flashy fashion plate — if this were 1972. Outspoken Vera (Jenifer Lewis) has never met an acidic opinion she didn’t like. And Madea, the indomitable, law-breaking, spirited grandmother is, well, Medea. (I confess I have never understood why watching Tyler Perry in drag is such a draw in each of his films; thankfully his/her role in this film is mercifully short.)

But Brenda’s foreign, over-the-top family isn’t the only Georgians she finds herself rubbing elbows with in the small, sleepy Southern town. Harry (Rick Fox), a college basketball scout who, serendipitously enough, had shown an interest in Michael back in Chicago, also happens to live just down the road from Brenda’s relatives and finds that his interest in Brenda just might be even more powerful than his interest in her son’s blistering talent. For her part, Brenda, who has three children from three different men, is averse to getting into another relationship. After a lifetime of hooking up with only the wrong kinds of men, trust is an exceptionally rare commodity.

As Brenda struggles to get to know the family she never even knew existed and discover where she fits in to her father’s will, she must allow herself to believe in the possibility of second chances, new love and the unstoppable power for good found only in the synergy of a loving family.

With such a muscular and imperative message, it’s a shame then that Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns fails on so many levels.

Populating his films with eccentrics and oddballs, Perry’s films exist in a state of schizophrenic flux, simultaneously serious drama and absurd, cartoon comedy. Much of the comedy in this film is so zany, excessive and over-the-top that it feels jarringly out of place. The humor in Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns doesn’t simply lighten tense situations, it obliterates all thought of them. It is a levity that, while unarguably hilarious, acts as a disservice to the overall story.

Perry’s films operate like fairy tales. Not the sort in which enchantment lies around every corner, but the sort of Disney-fied world in which every cloud has a silver lining and each disaster always works out for the best. You can see every plot detail coming from a mile away because everyone knows fairy tales always have happy endings. And while there is an undisputable degree of satisfaction that comes from such unabashed wish fulfillment, it is not, alas, remotely realistic.

On the one hand, it is difficult to criticize a filmmaker so unapologetically optimistic, especially when he makes inspirational films for a demographic of moviegoers who, by and large, by any liberal or conservative definition, face life as a much more uphill battle than most of us. On the other hand, Perry does a disservice to his audience and his craft in painting in wide generalities and simplistic brushes, rarely pausing long enough to really dig deep into the issues he only gives surface treatment.

Tyler Perry is not trying to be Spike Lee — that much is obvious. If anything, Perry is trying to present a different (and more family friendly) perspective to some of the same issues raised by Lee and other African-American filmmakers. And in doing so, I think he has found a significant and even indispensable voice. But by refusing to really get his hands dirty, to really wallow in the muck long enough to show his audiences the truth of the matter, it makes his work appear shallow and uninformed.

Wrapping up each and every problem with a nice, pretty bow may occasionally work on the screen, but as soon as the theater lights go up, life rushes in to fill the vacuum. Perry’s heart is certainly in the right place and his reliance on faith and family is indisputably essential, but the question becomes: Is his work honest?

© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.