Family That Preys (2008)

Reel.com 6 of 10
Tyler Perry is trying. Instead of sticking exclusively to the urban morality plays that made him a certified superstar, he appears to be broadening his niche-based appeal. And he's doing so by taking risks both in and outside the medium. Sure, most of his movies have been nothing more than mere translations of his theatrical works, but efforts like Daddy's Little Girls, and now The Family That Preys, show an artist who is at least endeavoring to expand his horizons...All the standard Perry-isms are present and ready to placate the fanbase: Hard work trumps haughty entitlement; God loves those who proclaim his power; women are the broken backbone of society; men are dogs, pigs, or some equally scurrilous combination of the same...Simple situations are turned into kitchen sink calamities, all so that our filmmaker can favor us with more "Jesus Saves" bon mots...If this sounds cynical, it's because Perry is usually better than this. His stage work, though clearly conceived as raucous revivals, has an energy and a drive that's hard to recreate onscreen. Oddly enough, he doesn't try. Even when dealing with material taken directly from his theatrical revues, Perry has to busy things up with underdeveloped subplots and conflicting character motivation. It's clear he is starting to understand the differences between play and screenwriting, and a cast like this can deliver little except excellence. To call The Family That Preys a transitional effort would be accurate and fair. Perry is indeed trying. To consider it a total triumph however would be foolish. - Bill Gibron
 
The Onion A.V. Club 7 of 10
Making an end run around the studios and the critical establishment, Tyler Perry has established himself as a commercial powerhouse by giving an underserved audience what they want: raucous melodramas populated by largely African-American casts, with plenty of Jesus and some gender politics thrown in as well. His talents may have more to do with marketing than writing or directing, but until someone else can come close to doing what he does, Perry deserves due respect for exploiting an untapped niche...His unabashedly matriarchal new film The Family That Preys focuses on the familes of Kathy Bates, an iron-willed millionaire who has taken the reins of her late husband's company, and Alfre Woodard, who runs a small, not particularly savory-looking luncheonette. How this chalk-and-cheese pair became best friends is explained only late in the game, and halfheartedly at that. But Perry never lets plausibility get in the way of a juicy plot element...While it's wonderful to see actresses as shamefully underemployed as Woodard and Bates on the big screen (the disparity between Perry's female and male cast members leaves no doubt where his priorities lie), even they can't make sense of his incoherent characters. One minute, Bates is ominously warning that her family "preys on the weak." The next, she's flopping into an antique convertible with Woodward for a cross-country road trip. It's as if she was acting in two different movies simultaneously. - Sam Adams