Tyler Perry’s 'Doing Life' Netflix Review: Was This Actually A Decent Movie?

The last time I watched a Tyler Perry movie, it was the legacy sequel to a 19-year-old franchise that, let’s just say, I watched and would have preferred not to. While that movie was a comedy drama, this one leans heavily on the drama side, and actually deals with the serious subject of redemption. In all the time that I have been watching Tyler Perry content for work, I have always found his male characters absolutely intolerable. They don’t know how to speak to their wives or their mums or their daughters. They’re inconsiderate, or if they’re nice, they’re not interested in women. But I’m excited to report that Carousel White (despite that hideous name) is a genuinely good man. Ironically, he starts the film in prison, but the whole point is that everyone has to start somewhere. Maybe it is the season of redemption for Netflix, considering that’s how I felt watching East Of Eden just yesterday. 

Doing Life follows Anika, a 20-something single mom who also happens to be looking after her very ill mother. I’m not entirely sure why Tyler Perry insists on at least one family member being absolutely unhinged in all his stories; in this case, it is Anika’s mother and one of her sisters, the latter of whom absolutely hate the idea of her doing well. While I understand their skepticism of her picking a convict as a partner, it is the way that they speak about Carousel that really got my goat. I understand that Perry’s films are family dramas, but there’s only so much drama you can do before your films start feeling caricatureish. However, it is safe to say that Doing Life balances it out pretty well. So much so that some would say it borders on boring. But I love me a good redemption arc, and I think this movie handles that a bit pretty well. But it has to be said, as a romance, the film falls very flat. Anika and Carousel meet in very odd circumstances. She is a prison officer and he’s an inmate, who saves her life in a really crazy situation. What follows is a love story of a kind that we haven’t seen in years. Everything today is physical first, but this movie makes a real good case for emotional connection, especially through letters. 

Jay Reeves brings an earnestness to Carousel White that saves the character from feeling almost biblical in its purity. Contrasting almost all of Tyler Perry’s other male characters, he’s basically a saint in every sense of the word (as in he’s never felt the touch of a woman). It genuinely could’ve come across as lame, but Reeves really manages to hold his own and essentially carries the whole film, considering he is the protagonist that we’re following. Naomi Baker is really sweet as Anika, but doesn’t have the opportunity to show too much range, considering she’s a very young single mom and has to force a sense of normalcy into her family life throughout the film. This could have made her feel a little bit stunted as an actor, but I think she plays it off very well. Tamberla Perry (no relation) does an incredible job at making us despise a sick woman; the kind of language she uses towards Carousel is absurd, and if anyone else were in his place they’d have gone crazy with rage. While I understand that she’s doing this on purpose because she’s trying to gauge his personality, I think it’s quite excessive in a typically Tyler Perry way. 

At its heart, the thing that makes this film worth watching is the earnestness of Anika and Carousel in their quest to be better people. The problem is though, it might come across as too slow and flat because it’s so predictable. But that’s the beauty of something that comes out on an OTT platform right? It’s simple, but that doesn’t make it bad. I feel like we’ve become a bit indifferent to effort in recent years, because if anything even half decent comes out, we’re ready to jump on it as haters. To be fair, the same thing happens on the other end of the quality spectrum, but what I’m trying to say is that sometimes mediocre is the point. Mediocre is good. Especially when you might be averse to the usual Tyler Perry stuff, a movie like this one is a great segue into his universe in a subtle manner. It’s definitely serious like his most recent stuff, and it makes you feel like everything is shrouded in mystery, even if it’s just a drama. This is signature Tyler Perry, and it works well for this film, because we don’t know how to feel about Carousel as a character right up until the end. 

At the end of the day, Doing Life isn’t your typical Tyler Perry film, and I feel like that is a good thing in this case. It’s still dark and gritty, and a bit random at points, making you more interested in the film than a regular straight forward drama. If you’re looking for something to have running in the background, this is a good choice, because after the first few minutes of the film, which are quite intense, you may feel a bit bored, so while you’re doing your chores and such, it’s quite perfect background noise. Oh, also, there’s a very cute baby girl in the film too! Heroism comes in different shapes and forms, and this film proves it through both Carousel and Anika. I like that each of them have personalities outside of them just pining after each other. There’s an emotional maturity in the characters which is so rare to see now.