Movie Review: Meet the Peeples

You can almost hear the cynical studio logic behind this film. “Hey, Tyler Perry has shown that black people will go the movies if you put his name on something——literally, anything, so why not give them a black version of Meet the Parents?” And this film could easily be called the black version of Meet the Parents, if you take away that film’s wit, pinpoint casting, interesting dynamics, and crackerjack plotting. If you leave Meet the Parents as a husk of its former self (a Meet the Little Fockers for example) then this film is what you’re left with.

What Works: Kerry Washington is bubbly…It’s nice to know David Allan Grier is still alive…uhhh, let’s see, what else…ummm…boy that Kerry Washington sure is pretty…ummm…

What Doesn’t Work: This is the exact wrong role for Craig Robinson to make his breakout with. He’s supposed to be this sweet, eccentric underachiever who keeps trying (and failing) to win over his domineering father-in-law, but the Meet the Parents dynamic fails on every level. For one thing, Robinson carries himself with a too-cool-for-school-swagger and never really breaks a sweat over anything that happens to him. If he’s insecure or nervous about meeting daddy Peeples (who he’s physically much, much bigger than) it never properly shows. As is, DAG’s dad is the overly fussy/neurotic one, and Robinson decides fairly early on that he’s a dickhead not worth impressing. Robinson’s loser is even worse than Stiller’s underachiever, yet he carries himself as the type of guy who just can’t understand why his better-than-him-in-ever-way girlfriend’s family wouldn’t love him right off the bat. [What, if anything, do these two have in common besides the fact that they’re both black? The movie never even attempts to explain it.]

So then where’s the source of tension? The movie keeps digressing into strange subplots, such as Washington’s barely-closeted sister having a relationship with her female camera worker, and Robinson’s brother trying to seduce her to make sure she’s gay. It’s a tonally off subplot that feels lifted from a different movie, as does so much of this mess.

What I Would Have Done Differently: hahahahaha…