And here I thought Tyler Perry movies were the absolute nadir of human entertainment. I stand corrected. “Writer”/”director” Johnny Mack has done the impossible; he limbo’ed under a door jamb in presenting Not Another Church Movie. Apparently, the only thing worse than a Tyler Perry movie is a parody of a Tyler Perry movie.
First let me state that parodies of comedy are a bad idea. On some level, all comedy is parody, hence, the best you can hope for is repeating the original … poorly. Of course, Tyler Perry makes plenty of dramatic film as well, so there seems to be a wealth of material to parody from. And yet, Not Another Church Movie not only missed the boat, it wasn’t even in line for boat tickets. If you have to picture this metaphor, Not Another Church Movie was sleeping next to a calendar with “BOAT RIDE TODAY” written in big red letters and today’s date circled.
There isn’t a single winning joke in this entire film. Not one. That boat bit you just read? Funnier than anything in the film. Seriously.
The closest Mack came to amusement were the parody names of “Hoprah Windfall” and “Taylor Pharry” (pronounced “Harry,” the “P” is silent … a correction which led to unsuccessful bathroom humor).
And, get this! There are real actors in this film, like people who definitely know the difference between quality and crap. Jamie Foxx as God and Mickey Rourke as the Devil should have been worth the view alone. But talent was wasted on this nothing of a script.
Let me see if I can piece together the plot here; the film wanted so badly to parody several films that no scene flowed into the next. The aftermath of each screenwipe introduced a new setting and new characters who, in turn, proved equally as unfunny as the last. There’s a scene of God crowdsourcing ideas (I’m guessing) for enhancing human development? But that doesn’t work. Later on, Hoprah orders God (get it?) to find someone to empower the women of the world – a noble goal if completely wasted on a movie plot. I mean, what do you do with that?
The film decided then to name drop as many Tyler Perry movies as it could while knockoff Tyler actor Kevin Daniels forced himself into a dozen different roles, not unlike Perry doing Madea. Here,
Madea is “Ma Dude” which might have been funny, maybe, cuz, ya know, it’s a dude in drag. Ugh. I don’t even like thinking about this film.
The film gave us painted on abs, just like Meet the Spartans, to enhance a loathsome sexual predator character. [Sorry, I gotta unpack that a bit — you stole a joke from a comedy currently rated 2.8 on imdb to enhance an orginal sexual predator character … why? Why? WHY?!] Even Tisha Campbell looked like, “what am I doing in this scene?” There were a couple of court scenes which also didn’t play, but did set up situations by which white males were found automatically guilty by a black woman judge merely by being white. Not only were these were painfully unfunny moments, they also parroted RW talking points. Geez, Johnny Mack, do you not realize this is EXACTLY what Fox news thinks is going on in all of Trump’s trials – that he hasn’t done anything wrong and is simply being found guilty for being a white man? What side are you on, that accused powerful white men are all victims? Good luck with that one outside RW media. I would love to screen these scenes side-by-side with To Kill a Mockingbird captioning the differences between “justice” fiction and justice fact.
Not Another Church Movie feels like a series of “SNL” first draft outtakes. “No, we can’t put that on air … No, not that, either; nobody’s gonna laugh…” At one point, I actually wished I were watching a stupid Tyler Perry film because at least his terrible Madea character is realized. I will never forgive this film for that feeling. This isn’t even timely parody; I haven’t seen a Tyler Perry film since before the pandemic. And I hope that never changes.
There once was a director Mack
Who wanted to parody black
His take wasn’t bold
Leaving his viewers cold
They wouldn’t smile if it had a laugh track
Rated R, 90 Minutes
Director: Johnny Mack
Writer: Johnny Mack
Genre: Parody of crap
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: I do not know. I really really really do not know
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Anybody who has seen even five minutes of it
