The one thing that I truly despise most when it comes to entertainment is the well of wasted potential. Ideas that start out powerful, or at the very least promising, only to end up misused and misdirected for personal reasons that lead the story down roads it should not go.
This, in my humble opinion, is the major flaw in almost all of Tyler Perry's work. His desire to inspire and enlighten only reach in one particular arc—that of religion—and as a result, I find all of his work very similar, very uninteresting, and VERY predictable.
THE HAVES AND HAVE NOTS has a MAJOR flaw in the story that destroys it, and worse still, it points out Tyler Perry's worst flaw as well. His insistence to retread over the same ground time and time again in the same pattern has allowed him to make a fatal mistake in the midst of the story of this play, thereby illustrating why he needs to move away from the sermons, move away from the idea that he has to feed the viewers with the same exact advice over and over again, and move toward something a bit more interesting. Maybe even a bit more important.
The flaw is simple: By the end of the play, everyone is thanking God for what he has done. The Have-Nots have been praying the entire time for God to help them, and in the end, it's the Haves that do all the saving. If you take out the prayers, the end result is exactly the same. Whether or not the Have-Nots pray to God to save them, the husband's boss, the king of the Haves, is not a tyrant. He is a kind man, who would have helped them anyway. The only thing that stood in the way of the plot was the manipulative rich boss's wife, and she too was defeated by her own actions, not by any movement of the Almighty.
As a result, the plot is extremely weak. We have the same old tired excuses for the son to deal drugs. We have the same old stereotype of the working man not being rich enough to satisfy his family's urges, ones based on peer pressure instead of love. And the solution, as always, is prayer and God worship. Somehow this always saves the day, despite the fact that it is actually the actions of the people involved that do all the work.
And finally the butler irritates me to no end. It was not the acting skill of the man, nor the comedy he tries to infuse into the play. More than once I laughed at his jokes. But I couldn't help but notice another flaw in Tyler Perry's thinking, and this one surprised me more than the first one did. For a man so dedicated to prayer, so consistent when it comes to the word of God to solve everything, I did wonder why adultery was a joke in this play, when it is actually a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. Sure, you might think I am nitpicking a bit, but stop and actually think about it: Praying to God, and worshiping God, is the main solution to your problems, according to this play. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" is an actual commandment. When the butler jokes about having his way with the boss's wife, why are we laughing? Why is adultery a joke, especially in Tyler Perry's world, where God is the only answer? Does God think that adultery is a joke? Is adultery like, one of the LIGHTER of the commandments, one that is more silly than it is serious? And if so, why?
I keep hoping that somehow Tyler will let go of his need to constantly go back to the Lord for inspiration, and instead do what (sometimes) shows in his work—that PEOPLE are the ones who make things happen, not God. That WE can make the world a better place, and we don't necessarily have to pray to make that happen. Not only do I think it would help us all shape this world into a better one
I also think it would make Tyler Perry's work better.
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