Tyler Perry’s Netflix film ‘A Fall From Grace’ is a mess—and Twitter has the receipts

By KC Ifeanyi

Tyler Perry is one of Hollywood’s most prolific showrunners—and he won’t let you forget it either.

In a Twitter post that went viral earlier this month, Perry videotaped a table stacked with scripts of eight different projects that he worked on last year that are currently in development or production.

“I don’t know if you know this, but all shows on television have a writers room,” Perry said as he scanned the table with scripts of shows including The Oval, Bruh, and Sistas. “Well, I have no writers room. Nobody writes any of my work. I write it all.”

Why is he offering us this information?

“Work ethic!”

Busy though Perry may be, it’s the quality of the work he’s churning out that people have long had an issue with.

There’s no question: Perry has built an incredibly successful career for himself.

His transition from stage plays to Hollywood, largely on the back of his lovable, gun-toting grandma Medea, has sprawled across film (Perry’s movies to date have grossed more than $964 million at the box office, if you can believe it) and TV (he has content deals with both Viacom and the Oprah Winfrey Network), allowing him to build a massive 330-acre studio in Atlanta, which he unveiled last year.

So yes, Perry’s success is undeniable—but what about that quality, though?

After Perry posted his “work ethic” video, Twitter immediately took umbrage with the fact that there are plenty of writers (specifically writers of color) who need a leg in the door and Perry was boastfully reminding everyone his door is slammed shut. And they wasted no time in pointing out that it’s quite evident that Perry was able to produce such a vast amount of work given how shoddy his results frequently are.

How Taraji P. Henson got on that boat in Acrimony, we’ll never know.

But if you need a more recent example, look no further than Perry’s latest film, A Fall From Grace, which premiered on Netflix last week—and that Perry shot in five days.

In what one writer perfectly calls a “Tommy Wiseau-esque classic,” A Fall From Grace is a romance-gone-dark story that follows a well-worn Perry pattern: Woman falls for the wrong guy. Woman’s life is decimated. Fin. But aside from a paper-thin plot and horrendous wigs, there are bigger issues to contend with: The film is riddled with continuity errors and mistakes that fall under filmmaker 101 no-nos.

Undoubtedly bolstered by Perry’s “work ethic” proclamation, Twitter spared no time in pointing all of them out:

Perry said one of the reasons that he doesn’t have a writers room is that his experiences in the past weren’t favorable. Plus, it’s clear that his work is indeed speaking to an audience—and speaking loudly.

But, at the very least, Perry, couldn’t you hire a continuity editor?

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