After seeing last year's excellent Daddy's Little Girls and Why Did I Get Married I thought Tyler Perry had finally come into his own as a film maker. Granted Mr. Perry doesn't have the visual flair of Spike Lee,John Singleton or the underrated Ernest Dickerson but what he does have is heart. Sadly even an A-list actress couldn't save Meet The Browns from being a trite affair that may hugely disappoint Perry's fans. For starters Mr. Perry needs to fire the editor of this film. Maysie Hoy who edited Perry's two previous films comes of as a first timer here which is ironic because she's been doing movies since 1992 and has worked with talented directors such as Robert Altman (The Player)and Theodore Witcher (Love Jones). I counted at least three scenes which didn't transition well at all and did nothing to progress the story. As for the script it seems as Perry wrote this script on a whim; and the film was just made to cash in on his success because it lacks the heart of Daddy's Little Girls and Why Did I Get Married. As for the acting Margaret Avery who was excellent in The Color Purple & the recent Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins gives a paper thin performance as does Lamman Rucker who was excellent in Why Did I Get Married. As for Angela Bassest she's good as always and plays the mother role very well, I'm anxious to see what she bring Notorious next year. I would say two of the strongest performances in the film come from Lance Gross as Angela and much to my surprise Rick Fox as her would be suitor. The big question though is how well does David Mann's Leroy Brown translate to film ? In my opinion not as well as Madea and some of his jokes seemed forced and unneeded. As for the big screen return of Madea it's unwelcome at best and she hasn't been missed. Tyler Perry has the potential to be one of the strongest black filmmaker in Hollywood, he knows a good story, has a knack for finding talent hence Lammon Rucker and Lance Goss who will both go on to do great things. But with his latest Perry sticks to a formula that he successfully broke out with two back to back winning film released last year. Here's hoping his next film The Family That Preys gets him back on track.

Meet the Browns is a tolerable albeit thoroughly bland effort by Tyler Perry, that manages to touch on sensitive, vital issues in the black community but also shortchange a great deal of those involved in the community into broad forgettable caricatures. Concerning the Brown family, as the title suggests, the film follows single-mother Brenda (Angela Bassett) living in Chicago with her oldest son Michael (Lance Gross) in high school and her two young daughters.

One day, Brenda receives a death notice that states the father she has never met has died. Upon losing her job after the executives decide to pull the plug on her business's entire operation, Brenda packs up the kids and sets off for Georgia, quickly discovering the side of the family she never knew existed. Brenda is welcomed with open arms to meet a good-natured clan known as the Brown family, which also provide her with a release from Chicago's hectic environment and introduce her to the slower ways of Georgia.

Meet the Browns is sufficient for both basic cable entertainment in addition to Tyler Perry's filmography, which always seems to find ways to incorporate more and more questionable film entries in there. If anything, the basic structure I just gave you is what the film manages to set up best; what it unfortunately does is squander relationships in the film in favor of too many pale and broad plotstrands that do nothing but muddle themes. There are various characters in Meet the Browns and they're all drawn very broadly, and their problems are never narrowed down to fit something that feels more human. Perry paints in broadstrokes here when he should be refining detail.

Having said that, Meet the Browns does a nice job at telling us (or maybe reminding some) that there is a vicious cycle in the black community that is sad but true. It's the cycle of a teenager dropping out of school for momentary income to support a family but only getting wrapped up in a dirty, gritty business that seems to be trying to find new ways to kill you or finding themselves living paycheck-to-paycheck. This cycle is acknowledged when Michael, the ambitious basketball player who is in the middle of being hounded and recruited to college teams, offers to get a job while working in high school. Brenda, however, worries that his hours and paycheck will overshadow the importance of education and studies and he'll fall down this path of directionless behavior.

When Perry finds underlying issues in the black community to bring up is when he's strong; when he's busy generalizing the community is when he's weak. Perry always seems to mean well but finds ways to dilute, skew, or completely contradict his own intended message and that has been his drawback from day one. However, with Meet the Browns, he hit a goldmine in terms of popularity, eventually incorporating the film's premise and characters into Perry's second sitcom, which went on to do solid numbers on Television. People obviously see things in Meet the Browns and its comedic/dramatic leverage that I have yet to find; wouldn't be the first time.

Starring: Angela Bassett and Lance Gross. Directed by: Tyler Perry.

"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.