Tyler Perry Tries to Sing A Different Tune With ‘A Jazzman’s Blues’

Tyler Perry has worn many hats over his 20+ year career, including playwright, producer, actor, and director. In recent years, the creator of “Madea” has been met with strong criticism over the quality and content of his films. From poor production to the exhausted trope of the scorned black woman (not to mention the wigs), viewers of Perry’s works have been very vocal about wanting more substance from the man who turned himself into a mogul. In his latest film, A Jazzman’s Blues, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, Perry displays a shift in his filmmaking, but is it enough to say he’s changed?

Set in the Jim Crow south, A Jazzman’s Blues stars Joshua Boone as Bayou, a young man whose kind-hearted demeanor is mistaken by his father and brother as weakness. Thank goodness for his caring mother, Hattie Mae (Amirah Vann), a wash woman with a talent for singing the blues. One summer, Bayou meets Leanne (Solea Pfeiffer) and the two begin a friendship. At night, they meet by the same tree and find comfort in each other’s company. Their affection blossoms into young love and Bayou proposes with the promise they’ll run away together. Before they can leave, Leanne is forcefully whisked away by her mother and taken up north.

Years later, Bayou and Leanne meet again, but the circumstances are dangerous. Leanne is passing as white and is now the wife of the sheriff’s brother. After seeing them together, Leanne’s mother, Ethel (Lana Young), lies to the sheriff regarding Bayou which puts a target on his back. Fearing for his life, Bayou escapes to Chicago with his brother, Willie Earl (Austin Scott), where he becomes a successful performer thanks to his manager, Ira (Ryan Eggold). Still deeply in love with Leanne and worried about his mother, Bayou plans a one-night engagement back at his mother’s juke joint. But his return home comes with tremendous risk and devastating consequences.

From the trailer, you could see that this film was going to be different from Perry’s other productions. Period dramas tend to require a bit more care, and more detail to temporarily place the audience into that era. In this area, the film does not disappoint. The landscape and set designs feel authentic to what we’ve seen in the 1940s. The juxtaposition of the Black south versus the white south, or the south versus the north, is well displayed on screen. Poverty and privilege are well understood within the visuals. I do wish Chicago would have been punched up a few more notches. There seemed to be some vibrancy missing from the bustling town where Bayou becomes a sensation.

It’s an interesting choice from the director to keep things so subdued. Especially within the nightclub and the juke joint, there seems to be a deliberate choice to not go too far. This is odd considering Perry enlisted Terence Blanchard and Debbie Allen to work on this film. Blanchard is an extremely well-known jazz musician and composer with two Academy Award nominations for his work on The BlacKKKlansman and Da 5 Bloods. Allen is a force in front of and behind the camera and is known for delivering choreography that has the ability to evoke pure joy. Yet, under the direction of Perry, in those particular scenes where having more would have made it feel more real, things felt a bit stifled.

The overall story, as a whole, feels somewhat flat. Forbidden love is a tale as old as time, and Perry’s version doesn’t really add anything unique to the concept. There aren’t really any steep hills or deep valleys within the film. Yes, there are triggering moments as the film touches on sensitive topics, including physical and sexual abuse, addiction, colorism, and extreme racism. However, the ebb and flow of the film are minimal due to the predictability of the story. Being able to guess where a film is going is not always a bad thing, but it does rob the movie of some of its magic.

This is not to say the whole film is bad, because it’s not. The talent of the cast cannot be ignored. Boone and Pfeiffer have good chemistry which makes their love story believable. Vann as Hattie Mae is a treat. The strength and pain of the Black mother are fully realized through her delivery. It seems a missed opportunity to not go deeper into these characters. It would have been great to get a more in-depth look into Leanne and Bayou’s lives while they were apart — her adjusting to becoming “white” and him gaining confidence in himself as he evolved into manhood. Those details might have helped bring something more to the story as well as given the actors a chance to show off more of their ability.

A Jazzman’s Blues is a step in the right direction for Tyler Perry. Quality was considered which makes this one of his better films. The script, originally written in 1995, was unsurprising but not boring. It makes one wonder if any adjustments to it were made in the near 27 years it sat on the shelf. For a film with “blues” in the title, more music was expected. Still, it shows us that Perry is capable of telling a different type of story. While we won’t stand in the streets and cheer just yet, we can at least look forward to more variety in the future.

A Jazzman’s Blues is available to stream on Netflix.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars