Netflix may get a bad wrap for cancelling things early, but this time around, the streaming service is actually benefiting from investing in a franchise that has lasted nearly thirty years. And that investment seems to have been worth it: the latest film in the series is a bonafide hit on Netflix, racking up 23 million hours of viewing time in under a week since it first premiered.
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Joe’s College Road Trip may sound like a new generic road trip comedy that is streaming on Netflix, but it’s actually the 14th(!) installment in Tyler Perry’s Madea movie franchise – and a milestone chapter of a series that first began on stage in 1999.
Tyler Perry’s Madea Franchise Just Launched Its First Successful Spinoff
For thirteen films (and eleven stage plays), the Madea franchise has been centred on the titular matriarch, Mabel Earlene “Madea” Simmons (Tyler Perry). Tyler Perry’s Joe’s College Road Trip is the first spinoff film in the Madea series, and the first instalment to make one of Madea’s family members the main character of the film (in this case, her brother Joe). That’s kind of a moot point: Tyler Perry plays both Joe and Madea in the film, as well as Brian, Joe’s son (and Madea’s nephew). The rest of the cast includes Jermaine Harris as Brian’s son, B.J., with Amber Reign Smith, singer Millie Jackson, Bethany Anne Lind, Ms Pat, and others. The story sees Joe take his grandson B.J. on a cross-country road trip in order to teach the sheltered boy about the “real world.” As the synopsis teases, “tensions get high, but life-changing lessons are learned.”
“Tensions get high, but life-changing lessons are learned” is the basic framework of all Perry’s movies, to a certain extent. Joe’s College Road Trip is clearly a Gen Z vs. Boomers comedy, with Millennial dad Brian wedged in the middle. If nothing else, Perry is smartly acute with his timing on these films, as many families are clearly dealing with the ideas and themes this movie touches upon (hence those big viewership numbers). And, as always, critics aren’t loving it: Joe’s College Road Trip holds a 40% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with a viewer score of just 50%.
That all said, the movie is holding the No. 1 spot on the Netflix movie rankings globally, in its first week of release. It’s not even close, either: Joe’s College Road Trip has gotten 12.5 million views in week one: the No. 2 film, The Investigation of Lucy Letby, only got 6.6M views, with the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon taking the No. 3 spot with 6.1M views. Clearly, Tyler Perry’s brand is still strong enough to make audiences show up on premiere day – even if some leave somewhat unsatisfied.
College Road Trip is getting praise as a raunch-comedy, with Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman writing, “The movie is a rude and rollicking lark, which makes it an anomaly in the Perry canon; even the Madea films are attached to some earnest swatches of domestic soap opera. But “Joe’s College Road Trip” is built around a character who makes Madea, in her hectoring brashness, look prim and responsible.”
New York Times‘ Glenn Kenny was surprised by how much heart and depth there was beneath the dirty comedy, writing, “There’s a lot more that you might not expect in a Tyler Perry movie… There’s a reason that Road Trip is premiering in the middle of Black History Month. While expansively anarchic to a fault, the movie’s anger, and its pride, is convincing.”
Tyler Perry’s Joe’s College Road Trip is now streaming on Netflix. Discuss this and more with us over on the ComicBook Forum!
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Official art by Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme -
Image courtesy of Tor Books/Macmillan -
A photo of the Retrovolt Arcade taken in 2017, showing several classic arcade cabinets and stools.
