Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
At this point in your Tyler Perry journey — trust me, you have one even if that journey is intentionally not watching his movies — if you walk into a single film that includes the words “written, directed and produced by Tyler Perry” with expectations, any emotional heartache or disappointment you feel is your fault. Perry has done nothing to make me, nor you, your mother nor your cousin, too, believe that any film he releases is going to make sense, be well acted or be a thing truly worth talking about. The absolute closest he’s gotten to that was “A Jazzman’s Blues,” a film released in 2022 that felt almost as if Tyler Perry tried to take the writing part of the film seriously. The movie absolutely could have been better than it was, but it also could have been way worse. As it stands, “A Jazzman’s Blues” is simply just a regular ole, run-of-the-mill film. We know this because, for a film that seemed to be what Perry viewed as some sort of crowning achievement (complete with a backstory that included August Wilson), the film came and went with hardly a splash and has been largely forgotten.
Truthfully — and we’ll get into this a bit more later — I feel that is the double-edged sword of Tyler Perry putting forth more effort and more production value into his films while still handling the lion’s share of the actual workload on his own: mediocre, forgettable film fare … like “Mea Culpa.”
Let me say this here: I do not hate Tyler Perry or his movies. I’m fairly certain that I’ve seen all of his movies, and there are even a few I’ve watched multiple times like “The Family That Preys.” Back in 2022, in a review for “A Jazzman’s Blues,” I said this:
“A Jazzman’s Blues isn’t a bad movie; it’s not good, per se, but it’s not bad. Nobody is in the…
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