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Why Tyler Perry Earns the Title of Hollywood’s Last Auteur

March 21, 2019 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Tyler Perry, the producer, writer, director and star, is the critical elephant in the room as Hollywood elites discuss diversity. With Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral, which had opened on March 1 for a $27M weekend and has amassed $60M in three weeks, his auteur career is far from finished – but the industry continues to bury him in an un-remarked grave.

Consider the sheer numbers of his output. Perry, 49, who also owns his own Atlanta-based studio, has produced 15 films with Lionsgate since 2005, starting with the 103-minute crowd-pleaser Diary of a Mad Black Woman. He has directed 21 features, written 15 and played the lead in 12.

The disconnect between audiences receptive to Perry’s mouthy cross-dressing matriarch who tells it like she sees it and his critical assessment is stark. His Rotten Tomatoes score for that first 2005 Madea outing was 16 percent rotten from 114 reviewers and, among audience members, 86 percent liked it.

“Perry doesn’t have any delusions of artistry, and potentially, at least, that’s refreshing,” said Stephanie Zacharek, who was then at Salon and now at Time. “But any points he earns for lack of pretense are immediately gobbled up by his lack of subtlety.”

Chiming in, the New York Post‘s Lou Lumenick was more succinct: “stay clear of this mess.”

Messy? Yes. But a profitable mess.

Since Madea’s feature debut, movies that Perry directed have grossed nearly a $1B nationally – with hardly a ripple in the global box office. He ranks 49 in the list of top-grossing directors at the domestic box office, and 92 in the top grossing domestic screenwriters. The average take of his sprawling comedies is $45M.

In 2011, Forbes Magazine ranked Perry the highest paid man in entertainment. Wow.

Over a decade ago, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, earned a cool $50.6 M despite opening eighth in theaters. In 2016, Boo! A Madea Halloween opened at number 2 and went on to gross $73M.

Reviews for the latter were a snark-fest, including this backhanded compliment from Jesse Hassenger at the AV Club: “Madea remains a distinctive, weirdly compelling character. Maybe someday Perry will make a good comedy for her.”

Perry has never won an Oscar but he did pick up a 2018 Razzie for worst actress in Boo 2! A Madea Halloween. He won some respite in 2019 from the group for his small role as Colin Powell in Academy darling Adam Mckay’s Vice, for which he earned the Redeemer Award.

So, he’s redeemed when he appears very low on the cast list in a white Oscar film – but not when he’s the lead in his own wacky yet popular movies. And, not only has he created a space where he can control his output by wearing many hats, he’s cast a number of African American leads when there were few opportunities available in mainstream films.

Starting with Perry’s first Madea outing, Kimberly Elise had a starring role with her own plot arc. He has cast a string of leading ladies including Angela Bassett, Gabrielle Union, Jurnee Smollett, Brandy, Viola Davis, Tasha Smith, Thandie Newton, Alfre Woodard, Mary J. Blige, Taraji P. Henson and Jill Scott, among many others. He built movies that were not only inclusive but empowering, creating opportunities and showcases for actresses that would go on to win Oscars.

Among actors, potential future 007 Idris Elba was a Perry star, as well as Blair Underwood, Louis Gossett Jr, Shemar Moore, Malik Yoba and Michael J. White.

From a storytelling standpoint, Perry’s movies seesaw from comedy to tragedy, cross-dressing farce to PG-13 romance and from melodramatic to evangelical. They’re not subtle. They shouldn’t work but the audiences that continue to attend Perry’s films and talk back to the screen in a communal call-and-response are beyond the sphere of the critics.

It’s easy to pick Perry’s films apart – but what holds them together? That’s something the industry needs to assimilate because Perry has planted his flag on a profitable shore of popular culture.

Hollywood is only belatedly, reluctantly recognizing the diversity of its audience — and only if it conforms to their preexisting notion of what defines Culture.

However, to quote Madea, “Mama don’t play.” Will Perry conform? Hell no! With this level of consistent success, the guy is doing something right in a major way. With a 16 score on RT, somebody’s missing the point – and it’s not Perry.

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: auteur, DGA, Diversity, Hollywood, Madea, Movies, Tyler Perry

We Are the Champions (of Women’s Films) – Hollywood’s Female Critic Drought

May 21, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Maya of 'Zero Dark Thirty' Takes no Prisoners (& Bigelow & Chastain)

Maya of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Takes no Prisoners (& Bigelow & Chastain)

Colorado College Senior Rebecca Celli has my back — and I’m sharing her New York Times Letter to the Editor below. Thank you, Rebecca Celli — and let’s do lunch soon. Gender inequality among the gatekeepers of film criticism has been high on my professional agenda for years. I have been screaming this to the rooftops for years. The shocker is that, while some women of my generation broke through and had a good run, many, many senior influential women critics have fallen by the wayside and not been picked up. And as for solidarity from our male colleagues, it has been anemic. Recently, when I went to post a review of Mad Max: Fury Road on RottenTomatoes, I was overwhelmingly surrounded by male voices. Can we change this? I have twice launched Adams on Reel Women columns on mainstream (not women’s) sites: AMC Filmcritic.com and then Yahoo Movies, and both time seen the column eradicated despite its success and influence. Yes, I’m part of the fight for more women directors — but when I interview Julia Louis-Dreyfus or Jessica Chastain or Melissa Leo or Charlize Theron or Emily Blunt or Rachel Weisz, I alw . She begins her well-reasoned letter in response to the article “A.C.L.U Pushes for Inquiry into Bias Against Female Directors:”

The American Civil Liberties Union’s recent complaint makes clear what everyone in Hollywood (and many of us outside Hollywood) know: Social networks and implicit discriminatory processes privilege men over women and threaten equal opportunity for women in the film industry.

But the issue is not limited to who gets to direct the movies; it extends to how those movies are seen.

I’ve just completed a yearlong quantitative and qualitative study of professional film criticism. I analyzed 131 reviews of 46 films that won audience awards at major film festivals to evaluate how a director’s gender affects reviews of films by critics.

And Ms. Celli continues from there, concluding:

It is a positive first step for the A.C.L.U. to examine how stereotyping influences how films are made and by whom. The next step, a necessary one, is to understand how such thinking affects how films are consumed and understood.

We female critics are often the champions of women’s films, and the gatekeepers in a field, I cannot say community, that is frequently disrespectful or dismissive of our voices. This is a call to arms, sisters (and brothers, too).

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: Female Critics, Gender Bias, Gender Gap, Hollywood, Jessica Chastain, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, New York Times, Rachel Weisz, Rebecca Celli, Sex Equity

Love to Hate: in ‘Edge of Tomorrow,’ Watch Tom Cruise Die and Die Again

June 15, 2014 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Tom Cruise begs for attention -- and gets it -- in Edge of Tomorrow (photo courtesy of Warner Brothers)

Tom Cruise begs for attention — and gets it the hard way (photo Warner Brothers)

 

Like the serial ex-husband that he is, Tom Cruise comes with a lot of baggage. His narcissism annoys us, and then he calls late at night to show his vulnerable side. It’s an act, and in the morning he annoys us again. And, then, that midnight call.

A true movie star, Cruise channels this mass emotion in Edge of Tomorrow, his Groundhog Day of a dystopic disaster epic. His latest reinvention is as the man we love to hate, until he cons us into loving him again. It’s a good act. He tapped into that vein of unlikability in Magnolia and Tropic Thunder.

Now, in Edge of Tomorrow, Cruise, as cowardly Army spinmaster Major Cage, he treats audiences to the opportunity to watch him die and die again, often sweaty and sniveling. It’s a little like the cinematic equivalent of pushing pins into a voodoo doll.

[Spoilers] Cruise’s Major Cage rolls under a truck and — squish — the truck rolls over him. Decapitation. Decimation. Coup de grace. Aliens that resemble electric calamari pierce Cage on the battlefield, and their metallic counterparts smash him like a bug back in training.

Every time, Cruise awakens on the tarmac, grizzled, puzzled, hungover from life and death. Then he heads again into the next killing fields. He’s delivered the collective audience’s wish — to see him squashed down to size. And, bby showing that he enjoys it just as much as they do, he slips out of the noose of disfavor. He resuscitates his image. He gets the joke and plays along. As long as he has a mass audience, Cruise is happy to be the butt of jokes, as long as sometimes he can be a hero.

 

Filed Under: Celebrity, Movies & TV Tagged With: Edge of Tomorrow, Hollywood, Movie Star, Tom Cruise, War Movies

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