When he's not distracted trying to accessorize dresses, Tyler Perry can write a decent enough soap opera.

This may be heresy in some critical circles. The harshly-reviewed Perry, who alternates broad "drag" comedies in which he plays bad-ass mom Medea (audiences at a Scarborough Town Centre screening Thursday hooted at a trailer for the upcoming Medea Goes To Jail) with family values-friendly African-American-centric dramas (Daddy's Little Girls, Meet The Browns).

However, neither low comedy nor schmaltz is a crime.

The Family That Preys -- kind of a mix of primetime soap with a bi-racial Thelma And Louise for older women -- is his most ambitious of the latter to date. For starters, he actually writes some white characters who are neither villains nor comic targets. In fact, of the two main dastardly villains in the piece, one's black and one's white. Equal opportunity, I call it.

At the centre of the melodrama are urban-angel Alice (Alfre Woodard), a struggling diner owner in a blue-collar neighbourhood, and her hard-bitten best friend Charlotte (Kathy Bates), CEO of a billion-dollar construction firm. How two people so far apart on the social scale (let alone temperament) got to be BFFs isn't explained for quite awhile. We meet Charlotte as she bosses around the mostly-black help at the wedding of Alice's ungrateful daughter Andrea (Sanaa Lathan), an event Charlotte has paid for. Andrea, by the way, is villain No. 1.

We also meet Andrea's good-hearted, ambitious husband Chris (Rockmond Dunbar). At the reception that follows, the mixed-race Melrose Place wheels begin to spin as Charlotte's charmingly sleazy son William (the one-dimensional Cole Hauser) introduces himself to both Andrea and Chris and offers his "new family members" both jobs - Chris on the site as a worker and Andrea as an executive with an office next to William (wink, wink). Did I mention William is villain No. 2?

You can pretty much see where this is going, and it's entertaining enough to give the audiences people to boo and cheer. It's the other half of the movie -- Charlotte and Alice's cross-country adventure -- that occasionally pulls The Family That Preys up above the noise of betrayal, adultery and tinkly soap opera piano soundtrack.

Alice is a reluctant Louise to Charlotte's Thelma. But she knows something is up when Charlotte shows up in a vintage convertible and demands they see the country together. She leaves the restaurant in the hands of her "good" daughter Pam (Taraji P. Henson), who's married to Chris' best friend Ben (Perry).

This is a sweet subplot in the movie, and it gives Perry a chance to explore the "white experience" when Charlotte convinces a dubious Alice to go to a honkytonk, full of vivacious Caucasians line-dancing. As acting presences, Woodard and Bates (even with a chicken-fried accent) are a cut-above everyone else in the movie. And when they're together, it's fun.

Of course, back home the chicanery continues as William tries to get his mother fired (professional dragon-woman Robin Givens, believe it or not, plays the good executrix who's got Charlotte's back), Andrea gets arrogant with her adultery, and Chris and Ben's dream of starting their own company gets sandbagged by nefarious parties.

Not to worry though. The good guys always win in a Tyler Perry movie, even if the means is nonsensical. It's not Oscar material, but it's not that bad.
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