The benefit of having aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes is that you can find critics who come from all various walks of life, with different perspectives, approaching each film from a different angle, with a different background and a different subset of films that we’ve seen throughout our lifetimes. Different upbringings, different life struggles, so on and so forth. And in this regard, you have stumbled onto a review of a Tyler Perry movie. But not just any Tyler Perry movie. The third film in the Why Did I Get Married? franchise. And you get to read this from the perspective of a blind, white, gay film critic who has not seen the first two films. I would have, but I couldn’t find them anywhere with audio description. Such is life. So I’m not sure why these people ever got married.

I feel like there’s probably so much information in those first two films about why they got married, deep backstories, rich character development, and jumping into the third film admittedly is a little confusing if you haven’t seen the first two. I can attest to that. It was definitely like walking into a TV series that had been running for years and trying to pick up on everyone’s chemistry, figure out what happened in previous seasons, and understand all the inside jokes and references to things that put these characters where they are now. It’s not quite like the Madea franchise, where even though I cannot profess to have seen every single film with Madea in it, I’ve seen enough that I understand that world. Here, all I knew going in was that Janet Jackson wasn’t coming back. She seems to be doing that a lot. She also said no to being represented in Michael, which remains one of the weirdest decisions that movie made by actually honoring that request. Janet Jackson’s disappearance from film franchises seems to be a thing now, and I’m not sure either franchise is necessarily helped by it.

This time, the gang is older and supposedly wiser, and now they’ve got kids who are old enough to get married. Angela and Marcus, played by Tasha Smith and Michael Jai White, are headed to Italy because their daughter Jasmine, played by Armani Greer, is marrying Wesley, played by Everett Osborne. That brings back Tyler Perry as Terry and Sharon Leal as Dianne, along with Jill Scott as Sheila, Lamman Rucker as Troy, and Richard T. Jones as Mike, who I assume is wondering when he has to return to The Rookie set instead of doing embarrassing plotlines involving his hair, or lack thereof, and dating women far younger than him. Michael Jai White also gets one of those increasingly rare performances where nobody requires him to kick someone in the face. Considering how much of his filmography these days involves action movies, just giving him something different to do makes this interesting.

Then there’s Tasha Smith, who is entertaining basically whenever she shows up, and joining the franchise is the Idiot Whisperer herself, Taraji P. Henson. I have officially dubbed her the Idiot Whisperer because basically every time Taraji steps into a Tyler Perry movie, it ends up being far better than it probably would have been, should have been, could have been, or anything else. Without Taraji, nearly every Tyler Perry movie suffers. She seems to understand how to take his material and make it work. Just last year, Perry basically stepped aside and let her give that brilliant, completely unhinged performance in Straw. Here, instead of introducing some random performer from one of Perry’s shows and suddenly elevating them to prominence despite rather dodgy acting abilities, you’ve got an Academy Award nominee walking into the franchise. Her presence alone makes the whole thing feel more cinematic.

There are the usual tropes you get whenever a gang comes back together. They pick on each other, bring up the past, talk about the present, think about the future, debate their relationships and friendships, and mull over this young couple and what their future might look like based on their shared experiences across all these marriages, failed and otherwise. Without knowing the intimate details of every character and what happened to them in the first two movies, all I can say is that this felt like one of those “let’s get the gang back together” movies, and Tyler Perry actually delivered on that premise. To put it in terms I could understand, imagine if the American Pie cast reunited because Jim’s daughter was marrying Stifler’s son or something, and they brought basically everybody back except one person, then replaced that person with arguably an upgrade.

I know. Janet Jackson fans are going to come for me in my sleep. But I’m sorry. In terms of acting, Taraji is an upgrade. In terms of singing, Janet wins. I’m not taking that away from Janet. But Taraji is an Academy Award nominee for a reason. Janet is not. So maybe it’s like doing another American Pie movie without Chris Klein and randomly replacing him with Paul Mescal. I have no idea why Paul Mescal would be in an American Pie movie, but he’s an Oscar nominee, so suddenly you’re wondering what the hell is going on. There’s that instant feeling of familiarity here where you know these characters have been together before, they’re back together older and wiser, things have changed, and they’re going to rehash some old business while finding new things to clash over. New jokes, new laughs, new fights. Everything mixes together with a cast that seems to work seamlessly off one another.

It’s pretty easy to dismiss a Tyler Perry movie as hot garbage and walk away, but that also starts doing a critical disservice to the occasions when he actually makes something relatively competent or moderately entertaining. This is one of those occasions. He seems to have taken a little extra care bringing these people back together in both his script and direction. I have heard complaints about obvious green screen being used for Italy, which is unfortunate because, seriously, if you’re going to set your destination wedding in Italy, why wouldn’t you film in Italy? There’s no legal requirement that Tyler Perry choose Italy. Pick somewhere you can actually shoot. Part of the appeal of a destination wedding movie is the destination. The man literally made Madea’s Destination Wedding. He should understand this concept by now.

But it’s Tyler Perry, and the man is a machine. Can’t stop, won’t stop, apparently never sleeps. He writes, produces, directs, acts, runs his own studio and seemingly has 27 television shows happening at any given moment. I’m convinced he’s fed intravenously while producing, writing, acting, directing and editing. He’s probably side hustling as Marshmello. He’s got to be Marshmello, right? It feels exactly like the kind of thing Tyler Perry would casually add to his already ridiculous list of projects. Wouldn’t the greatest magic trick of all time be finding out Tyler Perry was actually born with an identical twin and they’ve been hiding him all these years? That’s how all this work gets done. There are two Tyler Perrys. Suddenly everything makes sense. I digress.

But I don’t have much else to talk about because I don’t understand the first two movies moving into the third. What I can say is that when I approach Why Did I Get Married Again? as a reunion film, I can tell this cast has great chemistry together. The fact that nearly everyone came back makes me believe these people legitimately wanted to return, and Perry should know these characters well enough by now to write them competently for the fans who already love them. Unlike the Madea movies, which are basically like the Ernest films where Perry picks up one character and plunks her into whatever random situation he’s thought of this time, Why Did I Get Married Again? actually feels like a legacy sequel. These people now have children old enough to get married, so they wax poetic about their own marriages, lives and failures, then project those experiences onto the next generation and wonder whether their kids are destined to repeat their mistakes. That’s actually a perfectly reasonable reason for this franchise to come back 16 years later.

The audio description was done by Iyuno, which has been around for a while, but I felt like there was a period where I stopped encountering their work as often. Now I’m suddenly hearing their name again, and I think they’ve come back better than they were. As I’ve started hearing Iyuno credited more frequently, I’ve noticed descriptions that seem better written and narration that feels stronger, almost like they’re trying to move up a tier in the audio description world, and I appreciate that. I’m less familiar with their stable of writers and narrators, but hopefully that changes. The script here was decently written and the narrator was good. I’ll at least add my usual hope that everybody was responsibly cast behind the scenes as well as within the film itself.

And we definitely need to do more with Tasha Smith just in general. Give this woman her own show, her own film franchise, something. I’m sure she’s extremely well known to Black audiences after the hours upon hours of Tyler Perry content that exists in the universe, but I’d love to see her become Tasha Smith, the star, without needing Tyler Perry’s name in front of whatever she’s doing. Somebody snatch her up, build something around her and let her lead it. She has all the potential but feels like someone who has spent far too much of her career in supporting roles without enough people asking, “What if we built the whole thing around her?” I think that’s a missed opportunity.

So instead of coming here to tell you how awful another Tyler Perry movie is, I’m leaning Fresh. It’s tentative. I’m sticking my neck out considering I haven’t seen the first two movies. But every vibe I get from this cast suggests that if you liked those films and wanted to see this group return for one more run, this is pretty much the movie you would want. Perry manages the reunion about as well as he possibly could, considering he was probably simultaneously producing five other projects, running a studio and secretly recording his next Marshmello album.

If you liked the first two Why Did I Get Married? films, you don’t have to ask yourself, “Why should I?” You’re pretty safe getting married a third time, as Tyler Perry reunites the gang for another shot at nostalgic glory. Shockingly, I believe it works.

Fresh: 6.0/10