Tyler Perry’s Mea Culpa is a legal thriller/relationship drama that dropped onto the #1 worldwide spot on Netflix. Perry wrote, directed, and produced the feature as his 25th. He’s best known for the Madea cinematic universe, which consists of twelve features with another outing on the way. He has a specific fanbase, but critics rarely find something to love about his unique mix of morality play and slapstick comedy. His latest is a departure but no significant improvement.
Tyler Perry Takes the Blame for the Latest Netflix #1
It’s hard to quantify Tyler Perry’s worst film. By Rotten Tomatoes scores, Mea Culpa takes the bronze medal, earning an 18% positive score from eleven critics and a 38% positive score from over 250 audience members. That’s rough but not unique. Boo 2! A Madea Halloween has an astonishing 4% positive rating, which any outing would struggle to beat. Tyler Perry’s latest Netflix film is the first of several to come. He has a distribution deal with the streamer, promising the next chapter of Madea’s epic odyssey to the home of Stranger Things. I can’t personally defend any of Perry’s Madea movies, but I will argue that some are better than others. The accusation of every entry becoming a carbon copy of its predecessor is unfair. The worst ones defy imagination, escalating into new levels of unpleasantness. Mea Culpa enjoys a unique presentation, at least in Perry’s filmography.
Mea Culpa feels most like a soap opera in its 60th season. For example, it’s the equivalent of those budget Disney sequels Frankenstein-ed from four or five episodes of botched cartoon shows. Lifetime original movies also make decent comparison points. Kelly Rowland stars as Mea (a joke in itself), a lawyer watching her marriage fall apart. Her husband, Sean Sagar as Kal, is perhaps the genre’s most pathetic man. He was fired from his anesthesiologist gig for showing up drunk, but he’s also a slave to his cruel mother and probably cheating on Mea. Mea’s new client is a painter who may have brutally murdered his girlfriend. He seduces her, she cheats on her husband, and everyone lays on the melodrama with a paint roller. It would make a serviceable parody of the genre if Perry could be intentionally funny.
There is, however, something darkly hilarious about him putting up one of the weakest cracks in the genre. Perry’s best performance is in David Fincher’s Gone Girl, but his attempt to swim in the same sea is an embarrassing mess. Nothing can stop Tyler Perry. He’s too famous to fail, but the critics won’t suddenly enjoy his films just because they’ll never go away. Perry rakes in views, and nothing else matters. We can all watch Tyler Perry climb Netflix’s top ten, but that doesn’t mean we would want to watch any of his movies.
