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November 20, 2013
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Why the Black Box Office Continues to Shock White Pundits and Scorn Snobby Critics?
— Posted by
Kenny Miles
As this audience becomes a more significant force, critical observations will be made and a backlash will fester. A huge movie critic pet peeve of mine was once again on full display when The Best Man Holiday opened. It is ridiculous when white, left leaning, urban movie critics who are lazy by dismissing a movie with an all African American cast as “a Tyler Perry movie.” The Best Man Holiday is the sequel to 1999’s The Best Man (at a time when Tyler Perry wasn’t making movies) is being compared to Mr. Perry’s shtick by a few critics…primarily because everyone in the movie is black. This isn’t amusing and it comes across as condescending and even with a tinge of racism if not foolish form.
Let’s take a look at the some of the puzzling highlights via Rotten Tomatoes regarding what movie critics had to say about Best Man Holiday.
“Soapy and seasonal - perhaps Seth MacFarlane put it best when he dubbed this ‘Love Blacktually.’” -Susan Granger, SSG Syndicate “All over the map, zipping from melodrama to slapstick with unnerving speed, finding the production trying to come across as a Tyler Perry knockoff, complete with Christian influences, broad antics, and unreasonable conflicts.” Brian Orndorf Blu-ray.com
“The sexism isn’t quite as noxious as one might find in Tyler Perry’s films, but that’s as far as the compliments go when it comes to this overextended and deeply crude sermon.” -Chris Cabin, Slant Magazine
The review from Chris Cabin faced the scorn of some righteously angry commenter accusing him of racism. The irony of movie critics comparing Malcolm Lee to Tyler Perry exposes their vast ignorance because the director criticized Tyler Perry a few years ago and anyone who follows African American film directors know that his outspoken cousin Spike Lee HATES Mr. Perry. In fact, the only thing these directors have in common would be their race and they work behind the camera. And this brings to light the lack of understanding of black filmmakers among white critics. Would any legitimate movies critic compare Michael Bay to Quentin Tarantino? No! But aligning the slapstick, one dimensional, superficial stereotypes of a Madea movie as identical to the serious themes of faith, love, terminal illness with rich characters featured in Best Man Holiday is a poor judgment of film critiquing.
This goes back to the naive industry not making enough movies for different demographics. Maybe if this industry begins to embrace diversity, then critics would be so used to seeing a diverse cast and just make an odd, inaccurate connection. As I have said once before, critics who loop all African American movies together is the true testament to the lack of diversity Hollywood needs to overcome in order to reach a broader market. This is a cyclical issue that the industry must own up to fixing. There seems to be a glimmer of hope considering two movies with an all-black cast (one is Black Nativity, the other an actual Tyler Perry movie) open within the month which is rare. Maybe in a few years, this “teachable moment” will be embraced within Hollywood.
This post was written by :
![]() who has written 297 posts on The Movie Blog Whether something is overlooked by Hollywood or whatever business trend has captured the Entertainment Industry’s attention, Kenny Miles loves to talk about movies (especially the cultural impact of a film). He covers various aspects of movies including specialty genre films, limited release, independent, foreign language, documentary features, and THE much infamous "awards season." Also, he likes to offer his opinion on the business of film, marketing strategy, and branding. He currently resides in Denver, Colorado and is a member of the Denver Film Critics Society critics group. When he isn’t writing, Kenny channels his passion for interacting with moviegoers (something most movie pundits lack) as a pollster for the market research company CinemaScore and working as floor staff/special events coordinator in the film community. You can follow him on Twitter @kmiles723. visit author's website | Contact the Author
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