It’s not even Thanksgiving yet, and Christmas films are already creeping into theatres and onto streaming, including Tyler Perry’s The Gospel of Christmas. If there’s ever been a perfect candidate for the Razzies, it’s this over-the-top family drama.
Isaac (Durell “Tank” Babbs) is a washed-up singer who returns home to small-town Georgia after playing in bars stops paying his bills. The secular man settles down with his wife and starts working at his preacher father’s (Fred Hammond) congregation. For a couple of years, Isaac’s just going through the motions. Then, his old man dies and leaves the Prodigal Son in charge of a dilapidated, in-debt N.Y.C. church. The sweet Southern family has to pick up and start over in the big, unfriendly Apple, and save the church before it’s too late.
The best part of this melodrama is the incredible vocal performances by the R&B legends and Gospel icons in the cast. Everyone brings their A-game, especially female leads Fantasia Barrino and Chanté Moore. Mezzo-soprano Barrino’s voice is soulful, with her gritty rasp shining clean through in “Evil”. Moore’s range is incredible, and she ascends into a wispy, seemingly impossible pitch during “It’s Alright”. The breadth of ranges, voices, and pleasant warbling from the rest of the cast is nothing to laugh at either.
But unfortunately, just about everything else is.
Canadian influencer Dax makes an appearance, belting out a song about how rough men have it–which is sung the morning after Isaac comes home in a perfume-drenched coat.
The movie is shot like the Netflix original it is, with a few wonky or wide shots that dip in quality. The sets–a whopping three recurring ones–are clearly built on Perry’s Atlanta sound stage. A wall of box TVs in the nightclub where Barrino and Moore perform stands out a bit above the rest in terms of bling. The visual effects suffer from AI, and magical angels and gold-plated guardians of God feel like strange additions to what is, ostensibly, a family drama.
The uncanny-valley CGI is paired with familiar family and faith themes. Believing in something is the crux of doing good for goodness sake. Temptation comes in many forms, and evil easily sways the weak-willed and self-serving. Forgiving those who do wrong is hard, and scars can take a long time to really heal. There’s no subtlety in the delivery of these messages, positive though they are, and everything’s spelled out (sometimes literally, like the antagonist’s name, which is “I am the Devil” backwards). That said, Isaac’s cynical, flawed nature juxtaposes nicely with his do-gooder wife.
Secular folks might feel offput by the overt religiosity. Even for the faithful, the “rebuking of the Devil” moments are over-the-top, and the preaching misses the New Testament’s nuance. But it’s a Tyler Perry movie. So you know what you’re in for from the get-go.
At the very least, the pacing is quick, with a new conflict emerging every ten minutes or so. The acting isn’t strictly top-notch, but it works well for the content, with (the constantly shed) tears feeling suitably sorrowful. And whether intentional or not, there’s some real humour to be appreciated here.
As the plot progresses, the story elements become, somehow, more ridiculous. In the final moments, Isaac sings a spontaneous rendition of “Talking to Jesus” for thousands of fans who paid to hear his big hit, “Drop Them Panties,” but end up loving the gospel tunes nonetheless. That, alone, says all you need to know about Tyler Perry’s The Gospel of Christmas.
Tyler Perry’s Gospel of Christmas is available to stream now on Netflix
