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I find it interesting that Lionsgate never advance screens a Tyler Perry film in the Midwestern market I cover (Cincinnati/Dayton). There’s never any additional promotional build-up, beyond the television ads and the likely magazine displays in targeted outlets. It makes sense, when you really think about it. Why waste time on free word of mouth screenings when Perry’s very name generates all of the word of mouth you need (and you don’t have to give anything away)?

Perry’s developed a winning formula, one that looks quite a bit like the fast convenient comfort food produced by assembly-line chains like Chipotle & Currito (Mexican), Piada (Italian), and Fusian (sushi). He provides easy to digest moralistic plays featuring women on the verge (oppressed women – here, we get a disparate group of single mothers trying to raise their children and keep them in a prestigious private school while overcoming obstacles like the glass ceiling and deadbeat to no-beat fathers), homespun wisdom, humorous cultural clashes (sometimes fueled by the presence of Perry in his “Madea” drag routine), and the inevitability of it all being wrapped up in a neat package that stuffs the souls of an audience that’s not so discerning about that bloated feeling they might walk out of the theater with.

As one of the few critics who has watched all of Perry’s big screen releases, I have discussed his evolution as a filmmaker – from his early days of merely setting up a static camera to film his staged productions to the growing sense of movement in and around the filmed space (although never quite creating character out of the space) – and what I believe to be the creative plateau he has achieved. He has maxed out his learning curve, both in terms of his work as a director and now, it seems, as a screenwriter. Single Moms Club features a collection of scenes that advance the plot, such as it is. The story doesn’t challenge the audience with either its characters or the overall direction of the narrative. It is a fairy tale with five princesses seeking their happy endings who band together to make it happen.

The problem that arises for Perry is evident in any individual scene. Characters are introduced, set on course, and it becomes painfully obvious that our writer-director is never quite sure when or where to cut things off. He has no feel for how the rhythmic beats play out in any given exchange and the lack of compositional skill on his part ends up undermining the potential for improvisational jazz among his cast. The saving grace is the fact that the story is so simplistic, the audience doesn’t have to exert itself much to keep up. You enter a Perry production willing to accept the product, as is.

Tyler Perry’s Single Moms Club is not fine dining, and we know it from the moment we enter, but it satisfies a basis urge and send us on our way, hungry but no worse for wear.

Now I have to acknowledge being at a decided disadvantage when I sat down for my Friday morning screening of Veronica Mars. I entered with no familiarity with the Rob Thomas television series starring Kristen Bell as a dark, quippy teenage private investigator with a trusty crew and a supporting PI dad (Enrico Colantoni). Apparently, her hometown of Neptune (California) is ground zero for murderous schemes amongst the wealthy and their hangers-on. Veronica did her best impression of Sam Spade for as long as she could and then she packed up, got a degree in Psychology from Stanford and then headed east to New York for law school and the security of a big firm, but the magnetic pull of home draws her back.

Well, a murder mystery involving her no-good-for-her old flame Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring) is the real siren call and its not long before Veronica finds herself digging into the old trunks and bags of tricks she swore she would never touch again. She narrates each and every development in a voiceover that could only be more annoying if she actually just went ahead and broke the fourth wall and addressed the audience directly (and it seems like she’s constantly fighting the urge).

I mentioned being at a loss, the lack of familiarity and all that, but it’s not much of a concern because I was surrounded by a surprisingly large audience of Veronica Mars fans (especially for a Friday morning) who hung on every word and action onscreen. It felt like I had been invited to someone’s house for a Veronica Mars marathon and this someone did so assuming I was a member of the club, so I had to keep up appearances. I noted the knowing laughter at what I could recognize as familiar bits, and even genuinely enjoyed a couple of the cameos (one from Bell’s hubby Dax Shepard and that all around lovable kooky guy James Franco playing the lovably kooky James Franco).

Thomas famously got the film made with the support of fans via Kickstarter and so, it should come as no surprise that by the film’s end, it looks like there will be further adventures ahead for Ms. Veronica Mars. Going back to my belabored food franchise metaphor, I didn’t mind Veronica Mars all that much because it, at least, gave the impression of stuffing in “organic” ingredients like witty pop culture references and a healthy awareness of its own disposability, which was more than enough to inspire its fans to invest in the product.