Summary
- Despite top talent like Jamie Foxx and Mickey Rourke,
Not Another Church Movie
received one of their worst Rotten Tomatoes scores. - The parody film attempts to mock Tyler Perry’s
Madea
series with a lead character named Taylor Pherry, played by Kevin Daniels. - The movie has been criticized for being lazy and cheap, with many audience reviews slamming it and giving it a low approval rating.
Not Another Church Movie may have some top talent, including Jamie Foxx and Mickey Rourke, but the film has landed both of them one of the worst Rotten Tomatoes scores of their careers. In fact, the parody movie initially debuted with a 0% score from the five critics who even bothered to review it, and only its sixth review pulled that up to 17%.
Directed by Johnny Mack, with James Michael Cummings co-directing, the film attempts to deliver a parody of Tyler Perry’s Madea series, including having a lead character named Taylor Pherry. It seems that very few people have been getting the joke, and the inclusion of Foxx and Rourke in the cast has not helped in any way. Opening in theaters on May 10, the film sees Kevin Daniels playing Pherry, who is given a mission from God (Foxx) to save billionaire talk show host Hoprah Windfalls’ TV ratings by writing a story about a dysfunctional family. The efforts of Pherry are sabotaged by the devil (Rourke), and many of Perry’s popular comedies are mimicked by what follows.
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Along with Daniels, Foxx, and Rourke, the cast also includes Vivica A. Fox, Kyla Pratt, Lamorne Morris, Tisha Campbell, and Jasmine Guy. While this kind of ensemble usually manages to guarantee a hit, it seems that Not Another Church Movie bucks the trend in the worst way possible, as many audience reviews also slam the movie, landing it a 40% approval rating.
Why is Not Another Church Movie Being Unanimously Criticized?
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Daniels made note that it was “really fun” to work on the movie, which was shot in just 10 days in Georgia. Commenting that he believed it would be good to pay homage to Perry’s work, and “crack a couple of light jokes.” He added:
I wanted to pay tribute to what he was doing, make a good joke about it, but I didn’t want to imitate, per se, what he was doing.
However, according to a review from ComingSoon.Net’s Luke Y. Thomson, “Perry aficionados ought to see it at least once, but it looks and feels so cheap that you’ll hate yourself for paying full price.”
Others called the movie “lazy,” and one even noted that it makes Perry’s movies “look like masterpieces.” This is something that is echoed across many audience reviews of the film, even if there is a smattering of often vague and almost identical 5-star reviews to counter the long list of 1-star ratings and comments that often use the words “worst ever”, and “Why Jamie, why?”
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Although there is some good news, in that several reviews note that anyone well-versed with Tyler Perry’s work will possibly find something entertaining in this parody, it does seem that, in the main, the film has not attempted to reach anyone outside this very small inner circle. It seems it is this decision that has ultimately led to the huge wave of ungodly hate for Not Another Church Movie.
Not Another Church Movie
is out in theaters now.
