Highly Overrated But Still Good

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

"Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns" starts off well enough with Angela Bassett playing a strong-willed single mother struggling to raise her three children amidst poverty and unemployment on the South Side of Chicago. But the movie quickly goes off the rails when Brenda receives a letter from a distant relative in Georgia informing her that her father - who was never a part of her life to begin with - has just died. With nothing left to lose, Brenda packs up the family and heads on down to the funeral to pay her respects to a man she's never met. While there she is introduced to the "crazy" Brown clan, a collection of broad comic stereotypes that even vaudeville would have rejected as too over-the-top. As to the film itself, any hint of authenticity is instantly crushed under the weight of lowbrow buffoonery, heavy-handed plot mechanics and a fairy tale view of the real world.Although he clearly means well, as a dramatist, Perry has never seen a shade of gray he couldn't reduce to simplistic black-and-white or a plot point he couldn't milk for all its melodramatic worth. All the men in the film, for instance, are either clowns, scumbags or knights-in-shining-armor, nothing in between. The gun shy Brenda - who has been hurt by so many men in the past that she finds it next to impossible to trust one ever again - has a certain depth to her character, but virtually everyone else becomes essentially a walking mouthpiece for what's right and wrong in the African-American community. And that simply doesn't make for very compelling drama.Of the actors, Bassett is nicely restrained and understated as always, and Lance Gross exhibits some genuine talent as Brenda's principled teenage son, but David Mann, Jenifer Lewis, Sofia Vergara, and even Perry himself, in a pointless cameo appearance as both Medea and Uncle Joe, are allowed to spin so out of control in their various shticks that they turn whole sections of the movie into little more than a circus freak show.Noble intentions notwithstanding, "Meet the Browns" is a true "drag" of a romantic comedy - in the most negative sense of that term.

For creating some of the biggest pieces of crap in the history of film. Actually, it's not even a film, it's just him -- taking a giant dump on everyone's faces when they watch this movie and making at least 50 mill. every time he does it.Please stop watching this crap, for the love all that is good, please stop. Note: This movie is already in the bottom 100. And his other movies are competing to get in. Every movie is the same tired old story written straight from the book, with different settings to appeal to the black community. Which they themselves should find insulting, it reeks of stereotypes and belittles the whole ethnicity.

********Spoiler Ahead********* I am a big Tyler Perry fan, and have supported all his work. I was so looking forward to this film, but I've never been so disappointed as I was when I saw this latest one. The actors were great, with the exception of a few that were just too way over the top. I know they are supposed to be, but it just didn't work with the drama. What really made me drop total interest was the scene where the family is being told their father, who was a deacon, used to be a pimp. And all the women that the family knew as upstanding, were various types of "hos" That scene was totally unnecessary and disgusted me. After that I didn't care to see anymore. Too bad Tyler, I hope you get some of these comments your fans are giving you so you do a better job next time.

Pity my poor friend who spent all day telling me how hil-lar-ious Tyler Perry movies are, tsk-tsking all day that I had not ever seen one of his movies. Chuckling about how funny this was going to be and how i was going to run right out and rent all the others. Sadly, she spent the whole rest of the evening over coffee and cannoli reflecting on how great Tyler Perry's OTHER movies were. I forgive her - we're friends.This movie was OK - it had its funny moments and good Lord don't we ALL have those family members? I don't care if you're black, Italian, Jewish or white-bread American - we've ALL got that same cast of characters sitting around our family table.And OK, i understand that unless i saw the other movies i would not have a clue who Madea is or why she's being chased by the police. But that's OK - i can let an inside joke slide, especially considering the huge hoot and roar that accompanied her appearance.Overall, i understand that this was not Tyler Perry's finest hour. But i sense that he has a LOT to say about families, standing proud, sticking with convictions when the rest of the world says "settle for less" and working hard to overcome circumstances. I will go out and rent his other movies, just to get a more fair picture of this filmmaker.