In modern Hollywood, there are only a few filmmakers whose names alone are enough to sell a picture. Martin Scorsese. Christopher Nolan. Quentin Tarantino. Jordan Peele. But there are even fewer whose involvement will have the opposite effect. “Mea Culpa,” a new Netflix drama, stars Kelly Rowland as Mea, a lawyer who becomes romantically entangled with her client Zyair (Trevante Rhodes), an artist accused of murdering his girlfriend. An erotic crime thriller featuring two talented and attractive Black performers sounds interesting, right? Now picture the same title with Tyler Perry’s name in front of it.
An erotic crime thriller featuring two talented and attractive Black performers sounds interesting, right? Now picture the same title with Tyler Perry’s name in front of it.
On the surface, “Mea Culpa” seems like any other entry into this subgenre. Legal dramas with sensual undercurrents have been a winning formula for some time. But as each scene unfolds, the audience is reminded that there are “movies” and there are “Tyler Perry movies.” In the 20 years since his stage plays first made their way to the multiplex with “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” Perry has dabbled in all kinds of films, but his unique approach to storytelling has consistently permeated all of them. Whether it’s a “Madea” flick or one of his more serious outings, Perry is liable to employ the same storytelling tropes, the same budgetary shortcuts, and the same inability to shift between different tones without severe whiplash.
In this, his 24th feature film as a director, Perry has so thoroughly exhausted his usual coterie of tired racial stereotypes that he has to expand into new territory: the dangers of marrying a white-mom-biracial man. Mea is married to Kal (Sean Sagar), a man she is convinced might be cheating on her with a former flame. But because Perry prefers his melodrama to be as layered and compounded as possible, Mea’s plight is more overwrought than simple suspicion. Kal lost his job a year ago due to being drunk and on drugs on the clock, so she has been financially supporting them this whole time.
This includes sending money to Kal’s brother Ray (Sean’s real-life brother Nick Sagar) to cover medical bills for their terminally ill mother Azalia (Kerry O’Malley.) Kal insists Mea keep his rehab and unemployment a secret, so on top of taking care of this man, his family treats her like dirt and, despite her being a high-powered attorney, acts as though she is an ungrateful, kept woman. Her only ally is her best friend Charlise (Shannon Thornton), who is also married to Ray, a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office. Ray is set to try Zyair for murder, so Mea ends up choosing to defend him in court purely out of spite for her husband and his family who have forbidden her from doing so.
Perry stacks the deck, making Mea’s in-laws an important staple of his work: villains who are so unlikeable as to cease reading like actual human beings. O’Malley, in particular, is so overt and cartoonish in her attitude as to exist on a different plane of reality. Nothing about her characterization resembles any interactions a person might have on Earth with another bipedal, carbon-based organism. Perry has a habit of writing characters that resemble the imaginary strawmen that populate one-sided stories your co-worker might tell on a lunch break, where they seem like saints, but everyone else in the tale is a monster out to get them.
So, even though the audience is supposed to be leery of Zyair, a man who may have killed his girlfriend, it becomes difficult to root against his palpable chemistry with Mea. Sure, he might be a murderer, but he’s a hunk who paints pretty portraits and looks like Trevante Rhodes. Who doesn’t want to see them give into their basest desires and have extravagant on-screen coitus? But if “Mea Culpa” is nothing else, it is indisputable proof that nailing the basics of a sexy legal thriller is beyond Perry’s admittedly limited powers.
It’s difficult to engage with the film’s second half, as it would require spoiling some of the worst twists in recent movie history. And if you make it to the end of this review and still genuinely want to watch the film, you deserve to experience the final act’s laughably bad paradigm shift for yourself. But the lead-up to those dramatic reveals is populated by some of the laziest, sub-Lifetime Original Movie storytelling. This is a movie where Zyair tries to seduce Mea by telling her how art is subjective, and the duo spends the second act just having the same tired conversations over and over with no dramatic escalation.
Even if his failings as a writer weren’t so evident, the way Perry stages his actors, blocks out scenes, and frames the camera all feels like the work of a first-year film student and not one of the industry’s richest, most prolific storytellers. Strangely, this is the lone aspect where Perry can be considered an aspirational figure.
Growing up, many Black people are constantly told by their parents that they have to be twice as good and work twice as hard to get what their white counterparts have. But Tyler Perry has found a way to cut that game plan in half. Whether or not a billionaire’s endeavors can be classified as “hard work” is a topic for another discussion, but it feels hard to argue that he’s ever had to be as good as any of his white peers, much less doubly so.
“Mea Culpa” is proof that being reliably mediocre at best and comically offensive at worst can be a brand all its own. No matter what new low he sinks to, there will always be an audience willing to give it a shot, for exactly the same reason we crane our necks when driving past car wrecks. It’s just so hard to look away.
“Mea Culpa” is proof that being reliably mediocre at best and comically offensive at worst can be a brand all its own. No matter what new low he sinks to, an audience will always be willing to give it a shot for exactly the same reason we crane our necks when driving past car wrecks. It’s just so hard to look away.
“Mea Culpa” is currently streaming exclusively on Netflix.