Director: Tyler Perry
Writer: Tyler Perry (writer)
Release Date: 12 September 2008 (USA)
Genre: Drama
Cast:
Alfre Woodard | ... | Alice Pratt | |
Sanaa Lathan | ... | Andrea | |
Rockmond Dunbar | ... | Chris | |
KaDee Strickland | ... | Jillian Cartwright | |
Cole Hauser | ... | William Cartwright | |
Taraji P. Henson | ... | Pam | |
Robin Givens | ... | Abby | |
Tyler Perry | ... | Ben | |
Kathy Bates | ... | Charlotte Cartwright | |
Sebastian Siegel | ... | Nick | |
Santana Pruitt | ... | Christopher | |
Kaira Whitehead | ... | Robin | |
Ron Clinton Smith | ... | Construction Foreman | |
Jeffrey Alan Chase | ... | Austin | |
Johnell J. Easter | ... | Customer |
Review:
In a shocking change of pace for Tyler Perry, "The Family That Preys" is, get this, a southern-fried melodrama, frosted with overbearing performances, low-budget production polish, and obscene displays of artistic and moral ineptness. It's nice see that Perry, in his fifth directorial effort, has decided to test himself with deeply challenging material, rising above his past transgressions, at last offering the screen a tightly wound story that speaks universal truths about the state of the human condition.
All kidding aside: "Preys" stinks.
Lifelong friends, Alice Pratt (Alfre Woodard) and Charlotte Cartwright (Kathy Bates) have enjoyed watching their children grow and their businesses flourish. When
Unlike the rest of the Tyler Perry catalog, "Preys" is engineered to win over a large, crossover audience for the Georgian mogul. Not that the film doesn't have huge, wet Perry stamps all over it, but there's a new angle to "Preys" that Perry hasn't sampled before: the Caucasian experience.
Previous Perry pictures traditionally looked upon white people as comedic foils who were quick with a racist remark or nugget of high-society disgust. "Preys" gives us Charlotte, who doesn't approach her friendship with
"Preys" is a soap opera in the most unashamed sense, and while this aesthetic has made Perry heaps of coin, his personal screen touch remains some of the worst overall filmmaking around. The new feature is perhaps even more melodramatic than anything that's come before, taking the Andrea/William affair and using it as the inspiration for the cast to arch their eyebrows to assured cramp, flare nostrils in unintentional comedic fury, and bounce impassioned lines of dialogue off each other with medicine ball grace. It's equal parts hilarious and aggravating, with Perry showing little shame as he works the characters into pants-wetting hysteria.
For "Preys," the action is actually split into two parts: the sticky infidelity web and
The infidelity side of the "Preys" script is given far more attention, but in all the wrong ways. Here, the performances are a wreck, with Hauser emitting the sexual appeal of a cold sore as he struts around like a mannequin, refusing to move a facial muscle (a Hauser specialty). "Preys" also has Chris to kick around, and the dim-witted character is used solely as the film's punching bag, employed here to suffer the most humiliation and to carry out another Perry commandment: the justified moment of domestic abuse.
By having Chris punch Andrea (cue audience cheer) to release his cuckold frustrations, Perry crosses the line, endorsing violence on a level he's only flirted with before. It's sickening and completely irresponsible. In a film stuffed with bibles, baptisms, and gospels, to watch the movie celebrate spousal abuse is an unthinkable step even for Perry, who is more than willing to profit from his bottom-feeding template of pandering no matter how much it could influence his target demographic.
With enough double-crosses and tragic ends to make "Days of Our Lives" wince, "The Family That Preys" clearly demonstrates that even when Perry desires to climb out of his own genre, he lacks the skills and the patience to truly test himself. Instead, it's the same old dance, only now it involves slapping around women.
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