White Lies

Why Did I Get Married? Directed by Tyler Perry

Tyler Perry has a critic problem, but it’s our problem, too. Perry’s newest film Why Did I Get Married? had only one “courtesy” press screening on the day it opened. The film’s distributor, Lionsgate, has been wary of reviews ever since critics slaughtered Perry’s 2005 Madea’s Family Reunion which opened No. 1 at the box office and went on to gross $40 million.

Perry’s previous film, Daddy’s Little Girls, wasn’t press-screened at all—a serious slight to Perry’s serious ambitions. Having sold over 11 million DVDs of his popular stage productions and brokered an unprecedented TV production deal with TBS, Perry is one of the most successful actor-director-producer-writer hyphenates today, but there remains a shocking disconnect between his work and the mainstream media.

Most critics don’t “get” Tyler Perry basically because most critics are whites who are not only clueless about Perry’s African-American culture, but unsympathetic to his particular expression. Why Did I Get Married? is typical of Perry’s Christian-based, black middle-class viewpoint. He convenes a group of thirtysomething professionals, psychologist and relationship expert Patricia (Janet Jackson) and her friends: criminal attorney Dianne (Sharon Leal), esthetician Angie (Tasha Smith) and plus-sized housewife Sheila (Jill Scott). They rent a winter cabin in Pemberton, Colo., for a weekend marriage retreat with their husbands, respectively, Terry (Tyler Perry), Gavin (Malik Yoba), Marcus (Michael J. White) and Mike (Richard T. Jones).

This retreat—Waiting to Exhale meets The Big Chill—lets Perry simultaneously show off black social progress, class diversity and sex roles. The ensemble fireworks are predictable but also entertaining. It’s alarming that American film critics alienate themselves from the aspects of Perry’s films that should be universal. He’s the most popular example of the modern romantic comedy genre that critics also dismissed in the wily and sexy amusements Two Can Play That Game, Breaking All the Rules and The Brothers.

In Married?, one of Perry’s repeated code phrases for the eternal war between men and women is “She’s cooking grits.” Yet film critics, who might even consider themselves knowledgeable about the art and life of singer Al Green (infamously, a grits-victim during a marital spat), don’t respond to the reference. Perry’s critical beat-down isn’t an issue of knowledge—or taste—so much as cultural preference. The four couples in Married? represent universal marital conflicts (incidentally, the kind Chris Rock trivialized in I Think I Love My Wife). From issues of trust, infidelity, career envy and classic chauvinism, these are basic male/female truths, unlike Knocked Up whose crass jokes are lies that the white middle-class tells itself.

Black pop artists from jazz to R&B are customarily used as erotic paradigms, but Perry upsets that exploitation by expanding black sexual archetypes and dramatizing traditional black spiritual life. Liberal critics seem put-off by Perry’s fundamentalist morality and by his populist approach to drama—even though Perry’s message of love and social unity is what white romantic comedies desperately desire (except for hipster romances like Before Sunset). Nothing in Knocked Up is as meaningful as Perry’s spectacle of men who must restrain their anger physically or his politically incorrect fashion show of women proudly, luxuriously wearing furs as signs of pleasure and achievement.

Perry’s women show forbearance and hope, reflecting specific cultural precepts: throughout Married? gospel music emerges from car radios. But this might also alienate most film critics, even those who praised Jennifer Hudson’s pseudo-gospel ranting in Dreamgirls. They miss out on the beauty of Sheila’s marriage testimony—a speech where Jill Scott nearly sings her faith, which then sets up Patricia’s climactic pledge: “The greatest achievement for any human being is to love God, yourself and others.” George Clooney wouldn’t dare.

But Perry dares—and wins—as an artist mindful of an audience whose problems and wishes are underserved. Married? isn’t an Oprah sermon; much of its humor and punch comes from Perry’s expose of domestic secrets. This happens to be the basis of R. Kelly’s extraordinary music-video opera, Trapped in the Closet—a work of true genius that the media has also underrated and ridiculed. The media mocks R. Kelly’s vernacular (calling it “crazy” is the easiest way to avoid its daring and brilliance) just as Perry’s comedy and Eddie Murphy’s in Norbit are disdained as unsophisticated or vulgar. (Though what could be less sophisticated or more vulgar than the R&B-grooving nerds in Superbad?)

It’s too bad that Tyler Perry’s quest for Hollywood fame leaves out the musical epiphanies of his stage shows. How odd to cast Jill Scott and Janet Jackson (looking pained) and not have them sing. Cultural pressure might be denying us a greater form of pop entertainment. It’s as if Perry was trying to prove something not worth proving—especially after Dreamgirls’ big mama and sexpot stereotypes. But Scott’s church-girl monologue is so radiant he might be radically right. It’s equally radical to see a movie full of good-looking black men who aren’t stereotype criminals. Besides, Denzel will take us back to modern slavery next month.