Following the scandals and struggles their family face, Charlotte and Alice, two young teenager girls from different social classes, who are best friends and struggle against saving the day, so they go in a long journey to solve their families challenges.
The Family that Preys shows grand advances in the filmmaking education of playwright-turned-filmmaker Tyler Perry. It's also his soapiest film yet, an overwrought melodrama of sibling rivalry, infidelity, family business power plays and terminal illness.
While it's wonderful to see actresses as shamefully underemployed as Woodard and Bates on the big screen, even they can't make sense of [these] incoherent characters.
San Antonio Express-News
September 29, 2008
(Tyler) Perry, a cinematic one-man band who wrote the script, produces, directs and plays the role of a decent husband and construction worker, is still growing as a filmmaker.
Boston Globe
September 15, 2008
The movie plays almost exactly like four daily soap episodes stitched together.
I appreciate what Perry is trying to do with his films, and it's nice to see an urban film that isn't a "Gangsta Picture", but he needs to tone down the soap opera qualities and let his stories unfold naturally.
Exactly the kind of preachy, pandering, tone-shifting, gospel-laced soap opera that [Perry has] served up time and time again to his dedicated audience.
This snail-paced film might as well take place in the 1950s, since it seems to have been inspired by one those Hollywood melodramas in which one company employs the entire town, and the only places free of corruption are the church and the local diner.
