Peeples (FILM REVIEW)
Peeples
Film Review
by Kam Williams
Blue-Collar Beau Meets Bourgie Fiancee's Family in Fish-Out-of-Water
Comedy
After dating for over a year, Wade Walker
(Craig Robinson) is head-over-heels in love with his girlfriend, Grace (Kerry
Washington). He’s ready to pop the question, and has even purchased a ring, but
there’s a slight problem: he still hasn’t met her parents yet.
Because of her background, Grace is a
little ashamed of her beau’s modest background. After all, she’s a high-powered
Manhattan
attorney with a proven pedigree, while he hails from the ‘hood and makes a
living by performing at children’s birthday parties.
Concern about their class
differences has Grace taking off alone to the tip of Long
Island for a weekend getaway at her family’s waterfront mansion. Rather
than sit at home licking his wounds, Wade decides to force the issue by crashing
the gathering.
His unexplained presence gets under
the skin of Grace’s father, Judge Virgil Peeples (David Alan
Grier), an overbearing
patriarch
with a need to control. Furthermore, Grace is afraid to tell him the truth about the nature of her
relationship with Wade, which serves to establish the familiar, sitcom scenario
revolving around a big lie that must be kept hidden at all costs.
Written and directed by Tyler Perry
protégé Tina Gordon Chism, Peeples is a fish-out-of-water comedy whose
stock-in-trade is making fun of the contrast between po’ and bourgie black
folks. Ala
popular Perry TV programs like House of Payne and Meet the Browns, the production
is littered with colorful, two-dimensional characters bordering on caricatures.
There’s Wade’s embarrassingly-ghetto
brother (Malcolm Barrett) who also shows up announced. He’s an oaf who puts his
foot in his own mouth by suggesting that Grace’s lipstick lesbian sister (Kali
Kawk) “looks too good to be gay.” Wade conveniently loses his wallet upon
arriving which means he looks like a total loser when he can’t pay for
anything.
You get the idea. Is it funny? I
suppose, provided you’re in the target demo and haven’t seen Jumping the Broom,
another comedy set at a beachfront estate (on Martha’s Vineyard in that case)
and pitting crass blacks from the wrong side of the tracks against the others
with their noses in the air. From shoplifting to lip-synching to skinny-dipping
to a sweat lodge to skeletons-in-the-closet, Peeples throws everything at the
screen but the kitchen sink, and just enough sticks.
An
amusing, if not exactly side-splitting, African-American-oriented variation on
Meet the Parents.
Good (2 stars)
Rated PG-13
for profanity, sexuality and drug use)
Running time: 95 minutes
Distributor: Lionsgate
Films
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