Meet the Browns contains the best scene that Tyler Perry has filmed — a tense yet tender exchange between Angela Bassett as a single mom of three at the end of her tether and Irma P. Hall as the elderly neighbor who occasionally cares for her youngest daughter. For approximately five minutes, Perry eschews his usual past-the-rafters melodramatics, and his marvelous actresses strike nothing but true notes: anxiety, pride, impatience, compassion. What’s more, the Chicago housing project around them resonates with a credible sense of place. It’s enough to make you think that Meet the Browns will build on the vestigial promise of Daddy’s Little Girls — the most tolerable installment do date of Perry’s instant-gratification theatre.

But then the film heads south, literally and figuratively, as we actually meet the Browns: a down-home Georgia clan of walking punch lines who take Bassett under their collective wing when they discover she’s a blood relation. The relative subtlety of the set-up falls away, and we’re subjected to the usual ostensibly comic histrionics. These scenes herald Perry’s true (and perhaps unconscious) M.O.: simultaneously insulting and pandering to his core constituency, who apparently see their lives and experiences reflected in these films’ sitcom-pat plot points, blustery characterizations, low humor and high moralizing.

Perry’s lack of subtlety and sometimes blatant disregard for narrative or emotional plausibility — Meet the Browns has its share of flat-out howlers — has never struck me as being borne out of stupidity. Rather, I think he’s a canny and even dexterous button-pusher who has recognized a niche and filled it. He’s an independent filmmaker, but he’s practising mainstream alchemy. He’s learned how to blend crassness with sentimentality with a personal flavor — a mixture that’s no less toxic for being so potent (and, if we’re being fair, vice versa).