Tyler Perry skips critics for audience

ATLANTA - Tyler Perry's new movie,

Daddy's Little Girls,

opened nationwide Wednesday with plenty of advertising but no reviews. Perry decided not to screen the movie for critics.

"Nine times out of 10 they've never been kind to me on any of my films," says the Atlanta writer-director. He says he's aware that not screening a movie in advance has become a tip-off to many moviegoers that the studio thinks the movie is terrible. (See our review, Page 6.)

"My audience doesn't pay too much attention to that," he says.

Indeed, Perry's last two movies, Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea's Family Reunion, were shot cheaply and independently in Atlanta, as was Daddy's Little Girls. Both opened at No. 1.

Girls marks the first Perry movie without his signature character, Madea, the tough-talking matriarch. It star Idris Elba as a working-class father of three daughters who faces losing them in a custody fight, and Gabrielle Union as an attorney who helps him.