T hanksgiving is right around the corner, which means Christmas creep is in full effect and the floodgates holding back the seasonal tide of holiday movies have opened to fully drown yuletide junkies in cheer. Among the first out of the gates is Netflix’s The Gospel of Christmas, brought to you by the maker of A Madea Christmas.
Instead of Tyler Perry in drag, reluctantly upholding the role of family linchpin, this time it’s Durrell Babbs – AKA the R&B stalwart Tank – playing Isaac, a secular musician who is forced into ministry when his pastor father charges him with resurrecting a sister congregation that’s become a blight in a New York neighborhood defined by immorality and anomie. ( East New York, maybe.) The 103-minute feature is both a ploy to horn in on Hallmark’s well-established territory and a proper return to Perry’s roots in gospel musical theater – but with considerably more money behind it and greater latitude to bend the usual chestnuts on faith and family toward his Old Testament-facing sermons.
Now a billionaire studio owner, Perry has as much claim to the title of film-maker as DJ Khaled does to the title of producer. The actual production is quite secondary to the names attached – and Tank is just the start of this star parade. Fantasia Barrino Taylor plays his dutiful wife, while Chanté Moore – the ageless 90s soul siren – brings tension as the heathen ex Isaac gigged around with before settling down. The rest of the above-the-line congregation reads like the kind of lineup you might expect to see on the funeral program for an Aretha Franklin-level Black American treasure: gospel royalty CeCe Winans, super producer Fred Hammond, pulpit grand dame Shirley Caesar. It’s just viewers’ good luck that these folk arrive with plenty of on-screen experience and thus don’t have to rely on Perry’s hasty direction.
The disregard for detail announces itself from the fade-in, as a disappointing bar gig has Isaac storming out with a liquor bottle and smashing it in frustration before rushing into cross-traffic. But viewers never see the grab, the shatter or other basic coverage that Perry, as director, should have made sure was there. (So it goes, I guess, when the top dog insists on hoarding all the major credits.) Instead, Perry jumps right to the payoff: Isaac being hit by a car, flying into the air and tumbling end over end four times before his humble landing compels a come-to-Jesus turnaround.
Tank is neatly typecast here, his hooded eyes and tur-tle- neck s immediately establishing Isaac as very much A Thing. But if the current season of Reasonable Doubt has proved anything, it’s that he is far better deployed as a villain than a conflicted saint. Some viewers will surely be spitting out their eggnog the first time they see Isaac leaning on the guardian angel played by John Gray – the Oprah-endorsed mega-preacher whose hallowed persona has taken a few knocks . Perry has Isaac puttering around in a sturdy Volvo wagon, a car the director famously invoked in a wider rebuke of his “highbrow negro” critics (ahem).
And yet this stage show set to screen manages to stay on track thanks to musical direction from gospel crossover king Kirk Franklin, no doubt. You can see and hear Franklin’s influence in the way the singers’ performances drive their characters’ evolution – Isaac moving from surly one-man bar show to tentative church recruit to confident gospel showman. It helps distract from Perry’s typically ham-fisted flourishes. The antagonist whose name is just “I’m the devil” spelled backwards (Beauty in Black alpha-cad Ricco Ross). The mix of Party City-grade angel costuming, kabuki stuntwork and shameless AI effects. The dead-end New York City soundstage that looks repurposed from the original production of Rent.
But if you absolutely must help Perry back to the front of Netflix’s most-watched carousel, do it for Barrino Taylor. The season three American Idol winner makes a compelling case for how much she has grown as an actor since her Broadway credits in After Midnight and The Color Purple. She is clearly in her element here as the steel magnolia – her tsunami of insecurities about her marriage, mission and mute son kept at bay by relentless optimism and unshakeable faith. And when the façade cracks and she’s forced to cry out, she doesn’t just make a joyful noise. She brings down the house.
If you can take The Gospel of Christmas for what it is – a rushed mashup of Miracle on 34th Street and The Preacher’s Wife – it should make for perfectly serviceable screen decoration. Just don’t expect to come away converted to Tyler Perry’s fruitcake approach to film-making: overstuffed, a bit nutty and growing more stale by the hour.
Tyler Perry’s The Gospel of Christmas is available on Netflix now
