Worth: $9.99
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Tyler Perry, Kenya Barris, Ari Emanuel, Whoopi Goldberg
Intro:
… made for fans and fans alone.
“Separate the art from the artist” is a phrase that regularly gets brought up when it comes to good or even great artists who have less-than-ideal lives outside of their work. Not so often with the opposite situation, where a good or even great person has created works that are… let’s be gentle and say “divisive”.
Ideally, one shouldn’t have to be enamoured by the art to engage with the story of the artist, although it certainly helps. In the case of Tyler Perry, we have a subject whose work is likely only known to Australian audiences because of his deal with Netflix starting in 2020 and a few starring roles here and there, which doesn’t really do justice to the decades prior as one of Black entertainment’s biggest names.
Co-directed, co-produced, and written by his ex, Gelila Bekele (along with frequent collaborator Armani Ortiz), Maxine’s Baby frames Tyler’s come-up as an all-American inspirational story. Tyler and those closest to him are candid about where he was before he became a star, scratching a certain emotional itch in showing the pain that he survived to become a star. Indeed, his mother Maxine is shown as the key figure in that upbringing, leading him down the right path while dealing with her own demons.
But in reference to the separation dilemma, a good rule of thumb is to, at the very least, attempt it at the same level as the artist themselves.
And here, that becomes quite difficult, as this is seemingly designed entirely for those who are already familiar and on the same wavelength as Tyler, rather than inviting anyone else to understand what the hype is about. To that end, the way it deals with criticisms from both within and outside the Black community (which, to the film’s credit, are given breathing room in the timeline), comes across as highly defensive and even passive-aggressive. “You just don’t get it”, no matter whether it’s coming from a creator or an observer, is not a good look nor a good argument.
While this melanin-challenged opinion-haver won’t wade into discussions of representation in Tyler’s work, which this doco takes great lengths to appraise and defend for all its admitted sticking points, the proof is always in the pudding, no matter how troubled the chef. And as bitchy as it may be to retort that the biggest argument to this depiction of Tyler Perry as a great artist is to sit through his art at length… well, witnessing Temptation, Acrimony, and Madea doubling-up with Mrs. Brown can make this all a bit difficult to take seriously (much like his dramas). He claims on-camera to just be as good as anyone else, but it’s not as if Oscar Micheaux or Marlon Riggs enjoyed the kind of financial bracket that Tyler and his entourage keep flexing on the audience.
Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story is made for fans and fans alone. It regularly mistakes proving his detractors ‘wrong’ as being the same as proving why his own art is ‘good’, and with how insistent it is on sanctifying the man and his artistic legacy, it’s laid on so thick that digesting this documentary is something of a challenge.
Those who enjoy Tyler Perry’s work will likely get a lot out of this, and well and truly, more power to them; don’t let any one voice get in the way of your own engagement. But from the outside looking in, hoping for a better look at a pillar of modern American media, it’s disappointingly off-putting.
