Oh Lord, Not Madea Again: Why Are Tyler Perry’s Plays So Good, But His Movies Aren’t?

Now as for a Tyler Perry movie, I’m not as amused. I supported movies like Why Did I Get Married?, the adapted version of I Can Do Bad All By Myself, and Diary of A Mad Black Woman (great start!), but lately, his movies have become a bit stale, following the same formula and coming up with the same results: Madea fests. Aside from the Why Did I Get Married? franchise and Daddy’s Little Girls, there were very few Tyler Perry movies you could check out without seeing Madea bust through, breasts low, voice high, gun toting and ready to fight. What used to be very comical became tired, and if that wasn’t enough, Perry would always hog the same sole positive character in non-Madea films, many of the actors would either overdo it or under act, and the story would end in such a non-realistic, quicker-picker-upper-let’s-hurry-and-wrap-this-ish-up way that it almost felt like time wasn’t used wisely in the construction of the theatrical versions of his movies.

Maybe it’s the fact that his stage plays, which mainly the black community see, are cool, but when he makes a feature length film distributed in theaters for a great deal of people of all backgrounds to see, it’s as if the characters are made 10 times worse: Meaner, sassier, clownish, and ten times more stereotypical. Or hey, maybe it’s the extra humorous dialogue from the stage plays that’s missing in the movies. Maybe trying to adapt a story from a play into a two-hour movie is something I’ve underestimated. Maybe it’s the singing we need!? Or maybe, just maybe, the silly wigs with the microphones hanging out of them on people’s foreheads are the key to his plays’ success, but what should have been an upgrade by going to the silver screen has turned out to be a downgrade in comparison to what you can enjoy when he’s on stage.

I’m not here to go on an extra long rant about where Perry went wrong in the direction of his career or anything like that (and if I did…OH WELL), but I just would really like to know why his plays are so easy to enjoy while his movies come off so blah? I can remember looking at the stage play of “Madea’s Big Happy Family” a few years ago when it became available via Redbox, and laughing my a** off, feeling for the characters, and singing with them all in the span of 133 minutes. But when the trailer for the adapted film version dropped with Teyana Taylor calling out “By-raaaaaan” and the same ‘ol Madea slapping sense into bad kids, I rolled my eyes.

As someone who thinks that Perry has been blessed with the gift and the opportunity to tell stories, his stories, via numerous methods, and having seen his work from the early days, I would love to see the same colorful and great work put into the stage plays put into the feature films as well. Oh yeah, and if the improvement of his movies means we’ll have to miss out on a movie a year and the chance to see more “gems” like Good Deeds, Meet The Browns, Madea Goes To Jail, and Madea’s Witness Protection, I’ll gladly wait patiently. Hey, I’m just saying…

Are you a fan of his stage plays? Are they better than the movies?

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