The Family That Preys

The Family That Preys is Tyler Perry's shameless attempt to make a cinematic soap-opera, and if you go by what soap operas are known for - heaping helpings of drama, thin characters, bland settings, and stiff dialog - the film is better than the average unsubstantial hour you could spend watching All My Children on CBS. And yet, there are several more substantial ways you could spend two hours rather than watching a Tyler Perry film. As always, the choice is yours.

The film feels like a full season's worth of soap opera material compressed into a one-hundred and thirteen minute film, featuring a various array of characters and their various arrays of problems. The characters come from one of two families, either the wealthy, whitebread socialites lead by the mom, Charlotte Cartwright (Kathy Bates) or the working-class black family ran by Alice Evans (Alfre Woodard). Cartwright and Evans have remained the best of friends, despite enormous financial differences, and develop a "Thelma and Louise"-like friendship when they hit the road in a bold turquoise convertible to explore the humble countryside.

Their children, all grown up and of all different ages, are the other characters we focus on. Alice's daughter is the bitchy, unfaithful Andrea (Sanaa Lathan), who is married to the ambitious, hardworking Chris Bennett (Rockmond Dunbar), who works a lowly construction worker job with his pal (Tyler Perry) working for William Cartwright (Cole Hauser). Chris has ambitions of starting his own construction company with his friend, until he realizes that first he must get his marital issues straightened out when he finds his wife has over $200,000 in a private banking account.

As you can infer, this leads to unconditional drama between the families, who must work it out on their own while their mothers are living it up in the south. This family drama will likely be exciting to audience who demand a film that briefly touches on a wide-range of emotions, rarely emphasizing on one certain moral or encompassing virtue. For those who want more characterization, investment, and positivity, this is a pretty meager offering. However, Perry doesn't pull punches when it comes to juggling multiple different characters. He shows his capability here when he creates several different people, all inhabiting the same world, and all dealing with unique problems. Even if the film is overwrought, it nonetheless is a competent production that steers clear of idiocy and wooden features like many other Perry movies do.

I'm also proud to see that the film sticks to its dramatic genre, regardless on how much dramatic material it infuses into its story. Coming off of the first Perry movie I watched (Diary of a Mad Black Woman roughly a year ago), I was offput by the way the film juggled an abundance of genres, ranging from melodrama to bizarre slapstick comedy to Christian-gospel to bleeding gum moral propaganda. With The Family That Preys, I respect the fact that Perry remains more attentive to the drama at hand. The last thing I wanted to see was the loudmouth, insufferable Madea show up and inflict her radical, obnoxious energy to a premise that is more about slow-moving tension. As I've seen, this is something she clearly doesn't do well with.

The Family That Preys is a serviceable picture, with unanimously fine acting (especially from its leads, Bates and Woodard), a more focused agenda, and a pleasant little picture. I grossly misrepresented this film which, judging by the cover, looked like a tired "walk in the shoes of another family' film dealing with race-relations and upper vs middle class, sociological drudgery. Perry has effectively made me second-guess just how aware and intelligent he is in terms of dealing with a specific subject. Just when you think he's doing one thing, he switches over to a slightly better thing.

Starring: Kathy Bates, Alfre Woodard, Sanaa Lathan, Rockmond Dunbar, Taraji P. Henson, Cole Hauser, Tyler Perry, Robin Givens, and KaDee Strickland. Directed by: Tyler Perry.

This is a great movie about business with morals and wit. Superb performance by all actors and actresses. Worth watching more than once

there are 2 things i need say here:

1-as a features(direction, acting, etc) this is a well done movie. i would even consider it for an award or two( not Oscar since this particular award is anything else BUT real life movies anymore). all the actors give outstanding performances except maybe Tyler Perry which one can see he is not a professional in this particular field. but even on this aspect he is at least putting the effort in. Taraji P. Henson, Cole Hauser, Alfre Woodard, Sanaa Lathan and Kathy Bates are all well casted. my main star here would be Taraji P. Henson , both as an actress as much as the character itself. this woman can be VERY expressive beside being still beautiful while not as young anymore. Robin Givens is engaging while Rockmond Dunbar is truly at his best! i give it an 8 rating at this chapter.

2- subject matter is NOT preying on a "certain audience" as some reviewers keep implying. it does cross the border of being BLACK or WHITE and that is its STENGHT. to sum this up, race does not matter anywhere as much as CLASS does. the present day stereotypes are all here, especially the corporate ones, and in a realistic form, that MANY of us could identify with on a general level( maybe not the wealthy ones that pay reviewers to "diss" this movie just because it obviously does hurt their PERCEPTIONS of living the life at the "top"). i give it a 10 rating for the plot and subject development even if i do not agree with ALL the points made here( but most of them).

the movie is not politically correct YET it does not play on viewer's emotion and expectations. it seems i am indeed a fan of Tyler Perry's production now that i think of it because i can not recall any of his movies that i do NOT like. also i am not part of the visible minority that most of the actors here are. doubt that this has any relevance as in WHY i like this particular feature(i really do not think it does).

i recommend this to any adult viewers and adolescents( no matter race) that is CONCERN with present day social values as they are being imposed from the TOP,( mass media, etc) and NOT from the old fashioned COMMON SENSE, that made this word spinning around, long before Hollywood came alive.

just give it a shot, the 3 star rating makes NO SENSE, really.

The hard worker and religious Alice Pratt (Alfre Woodard) raised her two daughters managing a simple bar of her own. Her snobbish and arrogant daughter Andrea (Sanaa Lathan) is graduated in Economic Science and works in a construction corporation while her sister Pam (Taraji Henson) stayed with Alice working in the bar. Andrea is married with the construction worker Chris (Rockmond Dunbar), who works in the same corporation of his wife and dreams on initiating his own business. However she is betraying him with their boss William Cartwright (Cole Hauser). William is the son of Alice's best friend, the wealthy Charlotte Cartwright (Kathy Bates). While Alice travels with Charlotte in a road trip without destiny, the ambition and infidelity of William trigger a series of events that will affect relationships in both families.

"The Family That Preys" is a reasonable soap-opera and my first impression is that it is underrated in IMDb. However, the plot point in the meeting of the board of Charlotte's company is so absurd and incoherent that spoils the story and might be the reason for such bad rating. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

OK, I've read all the other reviews, to date, and I have to agree with those who had a positive experience. I'm a 62 year old gay white male, and I gave this movie an 8/10. I am not an unreserved fan of Tyler Perry, and think some of the Madea sub-plots are pretty ugly. That said, I have watched nearly everything he's done, enjoyed most, and feel that this one is the best I've seen. The plot(s) were not difficult to follow, or swallow, and the entire cast was perfect, not a bad actor among them. As expected, Alfre Woodard and Kathy Bates were truly excellent in their roles. These gals have been doing this, and doing it well, for a long time, and are perfect together. If they aren't long time friends off-camera, they surely fooled me.