Let me preface this by noting that I’ve watched a lot of messed-up stuff. All the Saws, all the Hostels, all Human Centipedes, all the Terrifiers, Salo, A Serbian Film, much of Takashi Miike’s catalog and all the New French Extreme stuff, not to mention plenty of actual snuff (there is some truly messed-up stuff on the internet, made and uploaded by some truly messed-up people). I did watch them allllll the way through. It’s like testing yourself on an extreme roller coaster ride, but with movies. However, the one movie I can admit to noping out of before the end.
Tyler Perry makes a lot of movies. Arguably they’re all the same movie, but this opinion is unqualified because I’ve never watched them… “arguably” is the operative word here, it’s my way of making a broad sweeping accusation about something I have zero expertise in. Like people arguing politics on Facebook.
I decided to include a few family-friendly numbers into my OkGore routine here and there because Halloween movies rock! Even the safe-for-family ones. I decided I should jump into this “Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Boo 2 Eek Scared!” in the same spirit of exploration. It wasn’t pretty.
Here’s the gist. Tyler Perry is the honest lovable regular guy Dad raising up his rotten kids the best way he knows how. Tyler Perry is also a room full of fat old people in a constant state of arguing with each other. This is just the worst room imaginable. Even worse than the movie “The Room.” It’s just a vehicle for Tyler Perry to realize his dreams of being a fat old woman who spends her day arguing with another Tyler Perry fat old woman, plus two fat old men just because he wanted to be inclusive I suppose. I mean I think they’re arguing, it’s mostly just muttering negatively at each other, you really need to turn up your speakers to know for sure. I just know that none of them really like each other very much, despite choosing to exist in a room together.
Tyler Perry’s personal kinks aside, the rest of the movie is about dreadful actors and actresses who flaunt stereotypes and various family movie tropes about divorce and wealth and shitty teenagers and college frats and the “sassy old black woman” archetype.
I tried. I really did. I wanted to go into this thing with the best of intentions, “Who knows? Maybe these Tyler Perry Fat Old Lady movies aren’t the train-on-fire wrecks I always just naturally assumed they would be. Maybe I’ve pre-judged too harshly. Maybe I need to climb down off my high-horse and sleep with the enemy, so to speak… that enemy being a middle-aged black man dressed as an elderly fat black woman… I need to come down off my high-horse and sleep with a middle-aged black man dressed as an elderly fat black woman yes I do believe that is in fact what I’m suggesting I need to do. What do I know? I might like it. I might like sleeping with middle-aged black men dressed as elderly fat black women.
Don’t kink-shame, you don’t know me!
In the end I had to bail. A little more than halfway through I could literally feel myself getting older, watching the life slip out of my body like an agonizing slow mist leaking from my pores. Tyler Perry was killing me. Slowly stealing my life’s essence with every minute I sat in front of his movie. I needed to hit the Pause button and re-assess the choices I’ve made that lead me up to this point. I’ve practically dared myself to watch movies and videos that often had no business being made in the first place. Audio-visual abominations that I used to test my mettle, holding onto the dashboard for dear life as this race car hurtled down the track at 90 jabillion miles per hour. I don’t truly need to be watching these. I ride a motorcycle, I eat Indian food from unfamiliar street vendors, I go to my doctor’s visit crossing my fingers hoping that all the sugar, alcohol and cholesterol somehow won’t show up on my annual blood tests… I assume a lot of risk already, I have no need for these other cinematic thrill rides that make my blood race and turn me off of creamed chip beef on toast forever.
“Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Eek A Mouse Kill It Part Nine!” was that one step too far. I had to take on the one exhilarating challenge that I, quite simply, was not up to the challenge of. I gritted my teeth, I closed one eye and continued watching while loudly chanting “LaLaLaLaLa!!!!!” to distract myself during some of the more physically distressing scenes, but in the end I just couldn’t do it. Click! Off goes the TV, I hang my head in defeat, and Mido hops down from the couch, shaking her head in disappointment as she leaves the living room.
It had to happen sometime. I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. We’re all only human, and while we strive to be the best versions of ourselves sometimes our own limitations will be made clear to us, by way of a room full of Tyler Perry’s in old-fat-people suits arguing with each other. It’s not my fault that I couldn’t do it. It’s a terrible movie. A really, really terrible movie. I mean who the hell in the world of Hollywood financing looked at this script and thought “Now here’s a multi-million dollar investment that I won’t come to regret one day.” This is the natural course of events that mold our lives, we learn our limitations and use these instances as teaching moments.
Now it’s full steam ahead to the next very bad idea (“The Poughkeepsie Tapes”)!