“Why Did I Get Married Again?” shot to the top of the US Netflix chart this weekend, outperforming everything around it. One camp says the critical class has spent twenty years sneering at the most reliable hitmaker in America because his audience isn't theirs; the other says popularity isn't quality and volume isn't vision. Who's actually being a snob here?
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Add your commentBlack women have been the most loyal, highest-spending audience in entertainment for decades and the critical establishment spent twenty years pretending their taste doesn't exist. That's not a Tyler Perry problem. That's a them problem.
If a white director made ten films that all debuted at number one and had a thirty-year loyal audience, Film Twitter would have a Criterion edition out by now. Just be honest about why that hasn't happened here.
The gap between what people actually watch and what they'll admit to watching is the whole story of American culture and nobody wants to say it out loud.
I changed my mind on this over time. In 2009 I was the guy at the party explaining why Perry's work was formulaic. In 2025 I'm the guy who notices that "formulaic" has never once been deployed as a criticism against, say, every superhero film with a third-act battle scene. I was being inconsistent and I owned it.
I work at a library and I cannot tell you how many of our Tuesday movie club members — mostly women 50 and up — have been watching Tyler Perry since the church basement VHS days. They don't read reviews. They don't need to. They found what they like and they stuck with it. That is not a failure of taste.
I don't think it's a race thing exclusively. Adam Sandler gets the same treatment and he's also regularly number one on Netflix. The critical class just genuinely cannot process entertainment that isn't aimed at them.
The honest answer to "who is being a snob" is: the people who watch it but won't say so. The critics are just doing what critics do. The real cowardice is the viewer who puts it on, enjoys it, then says nothing because they're worried what someone thinks of their Netflix history.
I used to be the person who made the face when someone mentioned Madea. Then I sat down with my mom and watched "Why Did I Get Married" — the first one — and I cried twice. I don't make the face anymore.
There's a real critique buried under all the snobbery though. Pacing issues, dialogue that occasionally clunks, plots that resolve a little too neatly — these are fair things to say without sneering at the audience. You can like something and still look at it clearly.
Here's what I actually want someone to explain: if the films have real problems — and some of them do — why has no major outlet done a serious, generous, long-form critical engagement with the full body of work instead of just dunking every time a new one drops? That gap in the discourse tells you everything.
My film school professors would have failed us for citing Tyler Perry as an influence. Same professors who couldn't get a single project greenlit in thirty years. Something worth chewing on there.
Twenty years from now there will be a documentary about how the entertainment press missed this entire era of Black independent studio filmmaking and everyone in it will act very surprised. I am pre-emptively annoyed.
If you genuinely believe that raw viewership numbers equal artistic value then you have to also defend "Transformers 4" as a masterpiece and I'd love to hear you try.
I put it on Friday night, fell asleep by minute forty, woke up, kept watching. That is a Tyler Perry film experience and I will not apologize for it.
grew up watching these with my grandmother every Sunday. she passed three years ago. turned on Netflix this weekend and saw it was number one and just sat there for a minute. some things aren't about whether the dialogue lands.
The Adam Sandler point is fair but Sandler has had a full critical rehabilitation — Uncut Gems, Hustle, everyone suddenly remembered he's brilliant. Perry hasn't gotten that same second look and I'd push back on saying it's exactly the same situation.
ok but why do people act like admitting you watch it is confessing to a crime lmao
Because serious long-form critical engagement doesn't get the clicks that a good dunk does. This is a media economics problem as much as a taste problem.
right but critics don't say those things. they say "this is garbage" with the subtext being that anyone watching it is too unsophisticated to know better. that's the part people are tired of.
my aunt has watched every single Tyler Perry production since 2002. she is 71, she is sharp as a tack, and she would like critics to know she doesn't need their permission to enjoy herself
Tuesday movie club at the library, that is the most wholesome sentence I have read this week
popularity isnt quality, never has been, never will be. nickelback sold a lot of records too
he owns his studio, owns his masters, distributes globally and has done all of this without the approval of people who review films for a living. the snob question answers itself
nobody said viewership equals masterpiece, we said the dismissal is disproportionate. those are different arguments.
honestly the rehabilitation point is the one that stings. when does Perry get his Uncut Gems moment
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