Tyler Perry's Meet The Browns

Starring: Margaret Avery, Angela Bassett, Frankie R. Faison, Irma P. Hall, Jenifer Lewis
Studio: Lionsgate Home Entertainment
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
Running Time: 101 minutes
DVD Release: July 1st 2008

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DVD Review

Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns is a sitcom taken to the nth level. Brenda (Angela Bassett) is a single mom struggling to raise her family in Chicago. When she receives a letter inviting her to attend her father's funeral, she's not sure how to feel: Brenda never knew the man and hadn't interacted with that part of her family. But when she loses her job, she decides that now's the time to shake things up. (And, as a friend suggests, there's always the chance her father left her a little money.) While the film's central character grew up with incredible hardships (a prostitute for a mother and a pimp for a father who didn't stick around), writer-director-actor Perry takes every opportunity to inject a little humor into the vignettes. It is not her fault that she is too gorgeous and regal to be believable in the role, but Bassett--a superb dramatic actress--is sorely miscast here in a role where her subtleties are lost in all the fuss. Meet the Browns isn't Perry's best piece of work, but the fast-paced action and raucous dialogue provide enough fun to make the film worthwhile. With his name prefacing each movie, Perry has developed a franchise that doesn't fail to deliver what his fans are accustomed to: some variation of a dysfunctional family comedy and the appearance of his most famous character Madea--a cranky grandmother played by Perry himself that manages to draw laughs, even when her inclusion sometimes is superfluous. --Jae-Ha Kim

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User Reviews

unsophisticated comedy - Rating: 2/5

"Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns" starts off well enough with Angela Bassett playing a strong-willed single mother struggling to raise her three children amidst poverty and unemployment on the South Side of Chicago. But the movie quickly goes off the rails when Brenda receives a letter from a distant relative in Georgia informing her that her father - who was never a part of her life to begin with - has just died. With nothing left to lose, Brenda packs up the family and heads on down to the funeral to pay her respects to a man she`s never met. While there she is introduced to the "crazy" Brown clan, a collection of broad comic stereotypes that even vaudeville would have rejected as too over-the-top. As to the film itself, any hint of authenticity is instantly crushed under the weight of lowbrow buffoonery, heavy-handed plot mechanics and a fairy tale view of the real world.

Although he clearly means well, as a dramatist, Perry has never seen a shade of gray he couldn't reduce to simplistic black-and-white or a plot point he couldn`t milk for all its melodramatic worth. All the men in the film, for instance, are either clowns, scumbags or knights-in-shining-armor, nothing in between. The gun shy Brenda - who has been hurt by so many men in the past that she finds it next to impossible to trust one ever again - has a certain depth to her character, but virtually everyone else becomes essentially a walking mouthpiece for what's right and wrong in the African-American community. And that simply doesn't make for very compelling drama.

Of the actors, Bassett is nicely restrained and understated as always, and Lance Gross exhibits some genuine talent as Brenda's principled teenage son, but David Mann, Jenifer Lewis, Sofia Vergara, and even Perry himself, in a pointless cameo appearance as both Medea and Uncle Joe, are allowed to spin so out of control in their various shticks that they turn whole sections of the movie into little more than a circus freak show.

Noble intentions notwithstanding, "Meet the Browns" is a true "drag" of a romantic comedy - in the most negative sense of that term.

Meet the Browns - Rating: 5/5

I love this show. It will show you rough times to better life. Debbie

Great Movie - Rating: 5/5

Great Fun Movie. Add it to your collection of movies. People of color shown in real life.

Meet the Browns DVD - Rating: 5/5

I placed an order for a DVD titled "Meet the Browns. The order was received promptly and I will buy again from the seller.

Good Condition - Rating: 5/5

It was in pretty good conditions and was delivery right away. No problems with the cd.