Is it overboard to consider the Tyler Perry phenomenon a cult? His fiercely beloved books, plays and movies – which he writes, produces, directs and stars in – espouse inarguably admirable values, yet they do so in such an aggressively pandering way that they border on the creepy. This is life affirmation through hypnosis. Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married? – the guru regularly puts his name in the title – follows four married couples and former college friends on an annual relationship retreat, where they discuss, ad nauseam, the strengths and weaknesses of each other’s marriages. Kernels of wisdom are shared throughout, most often by Perry, who plays a noble pediatrician tragically under appreciated by his workaholic wife. There’s nothing wrong with any of it, really, unless you like your narratives to have a modicum of subtlety. It’s hard to shake the cult comparison, though, especially because Perry calculatedly allows only certain people into his circle. Ever since being burned with his movie debut, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Perry’s films are no longer screened for critics. The stories themselves, meanwhile, purposefully shut others out. In Why Did I Get Married?, nearly every white character is an unspoken bigot who rolls his or her eyes at the couples. The implication, of course, is that anyone who doesn’t like Perry’s movies must be a bigot as well.
