OSCARS 2025: The Six Triple Eight (2024)

From his origins on the so-called "chitlin circuit" to his seemingly limitless list of movies, TV shows, and stage plays, Tyler Perry's work has been defined by broad comedy, straining-to-the-rafters melodrama, overbearing sentimentality, and Southern Baptist moralizing. This combination has made Perry extremely wealthy and popular but never well received with the intellectual crowd. In fact, he's come under quite a lot of criticism from other black filmmakers for perpetuating stereotypes. Spike Lee referred to Perry's work as "coonery buffoonery" and it was viciously parodied on "The Boondocks." All of this is to say that the Academy has never come calling for Tyler Perry, despite his attempts to catch their attention. Perry's cultural dominance has long since fallen past its peak, especially now that most of his movies are easily ignored Netflix productions. Despite that, in 2025, one of his films has finally earned an Oscar nomination. Perry's latest feature film, "The Six Triple Eight," grabbed a nod for Best Original Song. This is mostly thanks to the music branch's running gag of nominated song-writer Diane Warren every year and refusing to let her win but I'm sure Perry is bragging about the occasion in one of his massive properties or strangely empty writer's rooms. 

As you might anticipate, "The Six Triple Eight" is based on an inspiring true story. Lena King, a black girl, and Abrams David, a Jewish boy, are fearful of pursuing their romance in 1940s America as World War II rages overseas. After Abrams dies in combat, Lena enlists against the wishes of her mother. Becoming part of the black Women's Army Corps, Lena makes friends and faces discrimination from white authorities. Led by the fiery Captain Charity Adams, the battalion is not deployed until a particularly difficult objective is found for them, to confirm the bosses' racist conceptions about black women. That would be to sort through the millions of letters sent to the front that have been left undelivered, a seemingly insurmountable task. With only six months to complete the task and based in a run-down French boarding school, the women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion do everything they can to complete the arduous task before them. 

I'll be honest, I'm not that familiar with Tyler Perry's output. Watching about half of "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" on TV was enough to confirm to me that I am not the target audience for his creations. Despite my limited exposure to the director's trademarks, "The Six Triple Eight" does nothing to dispel the preconceived notions I have about his work. Perry works at a staggering rate. This is his twenty-sixth directorial credit and his third to be released in 2024, which can be added to the list of seventeen TV shows and twenty-four plays he's directed since 1993. If you wonder how one man can be behind so many productions, "The Six Triple Eight" quickly reveals the answer. The film's characters do not have inner lives. Each one is an immediately understandable archetype. Lena is a virginal heroine, so pure that she resists the gentlemanly advances of a handsome black soldier until she has properly grieved Abrams. Her mother is tough, only seconds away from making a stern "mmmhmmmm" sound. Captain Adams falls into a similar role, the fiery black woman who refuses to back down from any challenge nor to apologize for her own existence. There's also a big sassy black woman, whose profanity scandalizes her bunk mates and is introduced being unable to squeeze her irrepressibly curves into a standard military uniform. 

That Perry reduces real life people, with histories and complexities like any human being, to such broadly sketched stereotypes should be unsurprising. "The Six Triple Eight" operates as a hackneyed melodrama at every turn. I have no doubt that the real life 6888th Battalion faced unspeakable levels of discrimination and prejudice. At the same time, the white antagonists of the film are so cartoonishly evil. Dean Norris plays the racist general as utterly flabbergasted at the existence of women of color, while also making him a mumbling figure of slack jawed incompetence. The movie also includes a horrible white chaplain, who derides Captain Adams as sinful from his pulpit. This leads to Adams giving a shouted and inspiring speech about her will to succeed, resulting in a slow clap from her cadets. That's the kind of tawdry emotional exaggeration that informs the entire movie. The WACs are put down every step of the way until they are heroically lauded for their actions. Any given scene is liable to burst into swelling strings in the soundtrack and blubbering tears from the characters. 

In execution, such a glurgey script feels more akin to a cable network movie of the week than an Oscar-nominated motion picture. Perhaps that's another answer to how Perry is able to crank 'em out the way he does, that he brings a television-like production style to his movies. "The Triple Six Eight" certainly looks like a TV show. The cinematography is warm but flat, with little in the way of notable colors or striking camera movements. This stale visual sense is most apparent during the few times "The Triple Six Eight" goes to the battle field. Tyler Perry and his team do not show much competence at creating thrilling, visceral, or intense combat sequences. Heavy-handed CGI is used whenever there is an explosion, sending soldiers flying into the air like video game avatars. A horribly unconvincing dummy puts in an early appearance during an awkward run through a war zone. That inexperience with pyrotechnics appears again during an ostensibly suspenseful moment in which a truck drives over a landmine. That scene ends in a blast so silly looking, I laughed and immediately felt bad about it afterwards. 

The only way you can tell that "The Six Triple Eight" wasn't made for Lifetime is the presence of recognizable movie stars. Kerry Washington plays Captain Adams, practically shouting all her dialogue at a faux-inspirational pitch. Washington is a good actress but any subtly or wit is smothered by the treacliness of the material. Ebony Obsidian, previously of the understated "If Beale Street Could Talk," plays Lena as a delivery machine for weeping emotions. Lena is so totally defined by her bawling grief that her dead lover appears to her in fantasies or visions, somehow the corniest touch in the movie. Still, I maintain that Norris is given the worst treatment, mugging non-stop at the evil white general. Perry's BFF Oprah Winfrey stops by for a cameo and Susan Sarandon appears as Eleanor Roosevelt for some reason. 

"The Six Triple Eight" is all too aware of how inspirational it wants audiences to find it. The film ends with an extended tribute to the real women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. That post-script goes on so long, as if Perry and his team really want you to understand how important these women – and the movie he made about them – truly are. Maybe that pre-credits teaser is so lengthy because it also showcases Warren's song, "The Journey." It's a perfectly cromulent ballad, its emotions as overblown as the movie it accompanies but considerably shorter. As far as random movies I had to watch because Warren wrote a song for it and the Academy can't stand to leave her out every year, "The Six Triple Eight" is at least less inexplicable than "Tell It Like a Woman." It's an embarrassingly shmaltzy melodrama, bereft of subtly and depth, that smothers a good true story in Hollywood bullshit. Yet I won't remember anything about it in twenty-four hours either, so I'm not too offended. See ya next year, Diane. [5/10]