‘Maxine’s Baby’ – documentary celebrating Tyler Perry as someone who wouldn’t give up

“Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story” is a different sort of feel-good movie. 

Perry feels good about himself, and by the end, you’ll feel good about him, too.

Warts? To paraphrase the bandits in the Bogart movie, “The Treasure of Sierra Madre,” we don’t need no stinkin’ warts. 

No matter where you come down on his artistry, Perry is inarguably a phenomenon: a Black man who turned a painful childhood and a run of rough times into a triumph. A hugely successful multi-hyphenate – writer-director-producer-star – he saw an underserved audience and, well, served it. Served it a mix of humor, farce, melodrama and church-bred morality that spoke specifically to what was once (perhaps still) known as the Chitlin’ Circuit, i.e., a Black middle class who know a race-based insight when they hear it.

A comparison might be made with the Borscht Belt at its height. You didn’t have to be Jewish to get the jokes (and the jibes), but it helped. 

Perry grew up in New Orleans. However, as he says in the film, “New Orleans didn’t produce Tyler Perry. Atlanta produced Tyler Perry.”

He was born Emmett Perry Jr. but his father was so monstrous (the two are estranged) that the son changed his name. His mother, however, was one of those near saints; she pretty much saved his life (hence the picture’s title).

But then, Perry saved his own life, too.  After a rocky start in theatre – most of us have heard the living-in-his-car stories – he found his audience. More importantly, they found him. He went from 30 people in the 14^thStreet Playhouse to selling out the Fox. The magic word: Madea.

Played in drag by Perry, she was an outspoken, no-nonsense, often hilarious figure, dispensing life lessons and one-liners with equal aplomb. Madea soon transferred to film, which translated into millions (billions?) for Perry. Let’s not forget that he is the first Black man ever to own a movie studio.

There are bumps on the road. Critics – read, mostly white critics – had no idea what to make of Perry’s movies. Spike Lee calls them – and I’m quoting directly here – “c**nery buffoonery.” Someone else calls them “cinematic malt liquor for the masses.” Still, the cameras keep rolling and the bucks keep rolling in.

But “Maxine’s Baby” isn’t interested in the bad stuff. Falling just short of hagiography, the documentary is a celebration of someone who just wouldn’t give up. Near the end, we attend the grand opening of Tyler Perry Studios with its soundstages named after Sidney Poitier, Whoopi Goldberg, Denzel Washington, Oprah Winfrey, Ossie Davis, Ruby Lee and, yes, Spike Lee. It’s as glam packed as the Oscars.

“Maxine’s Baby” is the Tyler Perry documentary those aforementioned “underserved audiences” would like to see. And there’s not a thing wrong with that.

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