The Family That Preys Review

Outside of those annoying "House of Payne" commercials on TBS, I'd never seen a minute of Tyler Perry's work in my life.

I don't have anything against the guy and I haven't been avoiding his work — I just never got around to it. In fact, I'm incredibly impressed that he's been able to build his empire by giving his underserved audience exactly what it wants.

So why did I decide to end my unintentional Tyler Perry blind spot? Part of it was curiosity, but mostly it was because my girlfriend and I wanted to watch "Burn After Reading" and one other movie on Saturday, and "The Family That Preys" lined up perfectly and we didn't have to wait around too long for the next showing.

I'd heard that his movies are crowd-pleasing, over-the-top melodramas that feature overly simplistic characters, and "The Family That Preys" is really no exception.

The story centers around the Cartwrights, a wealthy family led by Charlotte Cartwright (Kathy Bates) which owns a large construction company, and the family led by Alicia Pratt (Alfre Woodard), which features her two daughters (Sanaa Lathan and Taraji P. Henson) and their husbands (Rockmond Dunbar and Perry, respectively). Alicia and Charlotte are longtime friends, and their families clash with each other in a variety of ways.

Unfortunately, Perry favors simplistic characterizations — the eeeeevil people have little-to-no redeeming value (ok, they have NO redeeming value), while the good people are almost absurdly saintly (the only thing Woodard's character was missing was wings).

Fortunately, Perry has assembled a talented cast to help sell his material and they deliver. The MVPs of the movie are Bates and Woodard, who have an easy chemistry which makes it easy to believe they've been friends their entire lives. Bates, particularly, gets most of the movie's best lines and knows how to use them, energizing every scene she's in (though we've seen her play this sassy character before). Their "Thelma and Louise"-style subplot threatened to become more interesting than the movie's main plot.

Lathan, playing Woodard's daughter for the third time after "Love and Basketball" and "Something New" (am I the only one who thinks that's kinda weird/cool?), is suitably bitchy, though she that grows tiresome after a while. I actually preferred Henson's performance as Lathan's fiery sister more. Dunbar seems like he has potential to be a decent lead, but his character was a little bland, and I was impressed by Perry's own appealing, subdued performance in a supporting role.

Overall, the cast elevates the predictable material. Honestly, you'll see every plot development coming — the big surprise for me was that there were white people (Bates, Cole Hauser, KaDee Strickland) in this movie (though only one that I saw in the audience).

Despite my problems with Perry's writing and directing, I do have to hand it to the guy for crafting these throwback soap operas that you don't see anymore with characters over the age of 30 and aimed at (black and white) people of the same age.

I was surprised by how much I liked this movie, and it was headed toward a solid B grade. Unfortunately, I can't give any movie that is basically a gigantic buildup to a crowd-pleasing applause moment where ***SPOILER ALERT *** a man hits his wife right in the face more than a C. Oh well.

The Family That Preys...C