Tyler Perry's Meet The Browns

Delivery Time: 7 to 15 Working Days Format: DVD

A single mother living in inner city Chicago, Brenda has been struggling for years to make ends meet and keep her three kids off the street. But when she's laid off with no warning, she starts losing hope for the first time - until a letter arrives announcing the death of a father she's never met. Desperate for any kind of help, Brenda takes her family to Georgia for the funeral. But nothing could have prepared her for the Browns, her father's fun-loving, crass Southern clan. In a small-town world full of long afternoons and country fairs, Brenda struggles to get to know the family she never knew existed, and finds a brand new romance that just might change her life. Based on the popular Tyler Perry stage production of the same name.
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

Stills from Meet the Browns (click for larger image)