There’s absolutely no denying that Tyler Perry is very good at what he does, with the fact his net worth is estimated to exceed a billion dollars underlining the success he’s found as an actor, writer, director, producer, and playwright, but that doesn’t mean the projects themselves are worth shouting about.
It was only the other day that ominous rumbles began emerging that the Madea franchise – which was already retired once before being brought back – was in line for two new features at Netflix, and that may have been confirmed in a roundabout way after it was revealed Perry has signed a first-look deal with the streamer to create a string of original projects.
The aforementioned saga did hoover up over half a billion dollars at the box office, so there’s clearly an audience there, but that only tells half of the story. Perry has been nominated for no less than 24 Razzies throughout his career, while of the last 23 movies he’s been part of as a creative talent, only two of them have landed above the 60 percent threshold to avoid being designated “Rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes, and even at that A Jazzman’s Blues and I Can Do Bad All by Myself only scored 65 and 61 percent respectively.
You don’t get to where he is without having a knack for navigating the industry and having your finger on the pulse of what audiences want to see – never mind several standout turns from a purely dramatic perspective – but Adam Sandler and Happy Madison have already cornered the market on repeatedly churning out Netflix originals that more often than not fail to hit the mark among critics, so do we really need another one?
