Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns

A classic Perry production compacts a multigenerational narrative that might just as easily take up five years of a TV soap.

Meet the Browns, the latest Tyler Perry film, has a good heart. But it's a mess of a movie.

In his quest to make the perfect movie for African-American church ladies, writer-director Tyler Perry is inching closer and closer to the mark.

Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns doesn't quite match the emotional dramatic punch or raucous comic relief of last year's Why Did I Get Married?

Critical darts cannot penetrate the hide of this durable beast, the Tyler Perry industry. He's a box-office phenomenon -- his 2005 screen debut Diary of a Mad Black Woman and last year's Why Did I Get Married? were top-grossing movies.

Meet the Browns follows the patented Perry formula of broad comedy, romance, family bonding, melodrama and Christian inspiration.

And so, the unsolved mystery continues into 2008: What is it about Tyler Perry’s big-screen soap operas (or the man himself) that is so damned appealing?!

Writer-director-producer Tyler Perry delivers the mother of all melodramas with Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns. In case you're wondering, that's not a compliment.

Meet the Browns is saddled with the usual quotient of phony snafus and entanglements that are easily untangled.

There are things to like about Perry's latest effort, but it's an obvious step backwards.

Perry's feel-good flicks about the African American experience look as if they cost nothing to make, and there's no sign that the one-man movie studio is thinking about retirement.

Praise Jesus that Tyler Perry found Angela Bassett. In Meet the Browns, the actress brings her customary nuance to a stock role: a single mother raising three kids in the projects of Chicago.

Tyler Perry's fourth feature may be his most awkwardly plotted, cliché-ridden effort to date.

Browns is ultimately a victim of its creator's success: What once felt novel now feels well-worn, following the success of Perry's films and imitators like First Sunday.

Feel-good themes of resilience, faith and family aren't sufficient to redeem this scattershot single-parent dramedy from the Diary of a Mad Black Woman auteur.

In his latest movie, Meet the Browns, writer/director Perry has so much going on it's like a story smorgasbord.

Perry’s lack of subtlety and sometimes blatant disregard for narrative or emotional plausibility -- Meet the Browns has its share of flat-out howlers -- has never struck me as being borne out of stupidity.

This modern fairy tale proves to be a little hackneyed and bland. The lack of spice can be attributed to the film’s wishy-washy focus -- comedy or serious drama.

The problem with Meet the Browns is not really the story but, rather, the slapdash mechanics of Perry's storytelling.

Tyler Perry's gender-bending alter ego is just as big and bombastic as ever in his latest film, while his plots just get thinner and thinner.

It's not worthy of recommendation, but it is cinematic comfort food -- perfect for people who would like Cormac McCarthy novels a lot more if only the good guys won once in a while.

It's a sloppy, slapdash dramedy based on Perry's play (and video of that play) of the same title.