Review: "A MADEA HOMECOMING" Doesn't Come Out Quite Right

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 6 of 2024 (No. 1950) by Leroy Douresseaux

A Madea Homecoming (2022)

Running time:  105 minutes (1 hour, 45 minutes)

MPA – PG-13 for crude sexual content, language, and drug references throughout

WRITER/DIRECTOR:  Tyler Perry

PRODUCERS:  Will Areu and Mark E. Swinton

CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Taylor Randall (D.o.P.)

EDITOR:  Larry Sexton

COMPOSER:  Philip White

COMEDY/DRAMA

Starring:  Tyler Perry, Cassi Davis, David Mann, Tamela J. Mann, Gabrielle Dennis, Brendan O'Carroll, Jennifer Gibney, Brandon Black, Isha Blaaker, Candace Maxwell, Geneva Maccarone, and Amani Atkinson

A Madea Homecoming is a 2022 African-American comedy-drama from writer-director Tyler Perry.  It is the 12th film in the Madea film series.  The film is a Netflix original and was released to the streaming service on February 25, 2022.  In A Madea Homecoming, family drama erupts and secrets are revealed during the celebration of Madea's great-grandson's college graduation.

A Madea Homecoming opens in Atlanta, Georgia.  Mabel “Madea” Simmons (Tyler Perry) is preparing for the arrival of her extended family.  Uncle Joe (Tyler Perry) is criticizing people, and Mr. Brown (David Mann) is about to set himself afire while preparing the barbecue pit.  It is a special time for Madea's daughter, Cora Simmons (Tamela J. Mann), because of the impending arrival of her daughters, Laura (Gabrielle Dennis) and Ellie (Candace Maxwell).  Laura's son, Timothy “Tim” Marshall (Brandon Black), is graduating from college.  He is traveling to Madea's house with his best friend and fellow graduate, Davi O'Malley (Isha Blaaker), for a large family dinner before graduation day.

But there are some surprises arriving, also.  Tim has a secret to tell his family.  Laura has a secret.  Laura's divorce attorney, Sylvia (Geneva Maccarone), has a secret.  Richard (Amani Atkinson), Laura's ex and Tim's father, has a secret to tell, although Madea doesn't want him at her house.  Davi has a secret.  Davi's great-aunt, Agnes Brown (Brendan O'Carroll), and Agnes' daughter and David's cousin, Cathy Brown (Jennifer Gibney), have a secret.  They're coming to Madea's, but they weren't invited.  And it isn't a secret that Betty Ann Murphy a.k.a. “Aunt Bam” (Cassi Davis) is usually high, and everyone else may have to get high to make it through the family drama that is about to erupt.

2019's A Madea Family Funeral was supposed to be the final film in the Madea film series, but I ain't complaining.  A Madea Homecoming is similar to A Madea Family Funeral in that it features a large cast of new extended family members that many of us didn't know that Madea had.  Unfortunately, the 2019 film is better put together than A Madea Homecoming.

First, it should be noted that A Madea Homecoming is a crossover with British-Irish sitcom, “Mrs. Brown's Boys,” which is headlined by the character, “Agnes Brown,” played by Irish actor, Brendan O'Carroll.  Agnes Brown has been called the “Irish Madea,” but because this is my first encounter with O'Carroll and his character, I can't say otherwise.  Truthfully, neither the Agnes nor Cathy characters really add that much to A Madea Homecoming, but they are a pleasant addition, at least.

A Madea Homecoming has many, many very funny moments, but the film seems too long and too much of a rehash of scandals that have appeared in earlier films in the series.  The main plot and subplot feel more flat and dry than lively and funny.  The most consistently funny part of this movie is Madea Beyoncé parody that runs over the end credits, and Madea in a blonde Beyoncé wig singing off-key with the “Marcella Band” is delightful.

When I reviewed A Madea Family Funeral in 2021, I said that if it were indeed the final Madea film, I could say that the series went out on a relatively high note.  Madea returns on an off-key note with A Madea Homecoming, and it isn't the final Madea film.  Coming sometime in the future is Madea's Destination Wedding.

5 of 10

C+

★★½ out of 4 stars

Friday, February 9, 2024

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"Madea's Big Happy Family" a Big Happy Movie

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 76 (of 2011) by Leroy Douresseaux

Madea’s Big Happy Family (2011)
Running time: 106 minutes (1 hour, 46 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 drug content, language and some mature thematic material
DIRECTOR: Tyler Perry
WRITER: Tyler Perry (based upon his play)
PRODUCERS: Roger M. Bobb, Reuben Cannon, and Tyler Perry
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Toyomichi Kurita
EDITOR: Maysie Hoy

COMEDY/DRAMA

Starring: Tyler Perry, Loretta Devine, Cassi Davis, Shannon Kane, Isaiah Mustafa, Natalie Desselle Reid, Rodney Perry, Tamela J. Mann, David Mann, Shad “Bow Wow” Moss, Teyana Taylor, Lauren London, Philip Anthony-Rodriguez, and Maury Povich

Madea’s Big Happy Family is a 2011 comedy/drama and is also the 11th film in the Tyler Perry film franchise. Based upon Perry’s play of the same title, Madea’s Big Happy Family finds super-grandmother Mabel “Madea” Simmons coming to the rescue of her dying niece and her big unhappy family.

Madea’s niece, Shirley (Loretta Devine), is dying of cancer, and she wants to bring her three children: Byron (Bow Wow), Tammy (Natalie Desselle Reid), and Kimberley (Shannon Kane) together to tell them the bad news. However, her two daughters are in the midst of awful marital discord with their husbands. Byron is having major baby mama drama from his ex, Sabrina (Teyana Taylor), and his money-hungry girlfriend, Renee (Lauren London), wants him to return to a life of crime.

Betty Ann Murphy, better known as the rambunctious Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis), pleads with Madea (Tyler Perry) to help bring Shirley’s children together. Madea decides to do it her way, with tough love and fists (if she has to) and a little laughter along the way. However, Madea has family drama of her own, with her baby daddy, Brown (David Mann), and their daughter, Cora (Tamela J. Mann).

As Madea movies go, Madea’s Big Happy Family is probably the one that most mixes the somberness and the outlandishness found in Tyler Perry’s movie starring or featuring Madea. The conflicts and confusion that surrounds Shirley’s family may seem over-the-top, but I can attest to directly experiencing or being familiar with some of this family’s problems. Besides, the actors give such tight, authentic performances that nothing their characters do really seems hysterical and contrived, which are occasional sins of Mr. Perry the screenwriter. Shad Moss, better known as the rapper, Bow Wow, delivers a surprisingly strong performance, subtle and graceful in some places. That is a trait not found in many rapper-turned-actors.

The craziness that ensues between Madea, Cora, and Brown is indeed funny – some of funniest Madea stuff since Madea’s Family Reunion. Perry deftly uses Madea’s no-nonsense approach to issues of life, death, pain, and general crisis to cloak some truth’s that a lot of people need to hear, especially members of the African-American audience under 40 years old. You would not be wrong to think that Madea’s Big Happy Family is Perry’s most potent message delivery system. If you get tired to the preaching, Madea, Cora, and Brown offer some excellent comic set pieces.

This film’s glaring weakness is the Shirley character. Ostensibly the lynchpin for a testy family reunion, Shirley is merely a prop or conversation piece that keeps the other characters’ roles advancing from one scene to the next. That is disappointing on a number of levels, one of them being that it robs Loretta Devine of a chance to show her range. Still, Madea’s Big Happy Family is a rousing success. The messages of a loving God, hope, love, self-respect, and respect for others go down smoothly in this spoonful of sweet medicine.

7 of 10
A-

Saturday, September 03, 2011

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Review: "Madea Goes to Jail" a Message-Heavy Film

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 6 (of 2009) by Leroy Douresseaux

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail (2009)
Running time: 103 minutes (1 hour, 43 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for mature thematic material, drug content, some violence, and sexual situations
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Tyler Perry
PRODUCERS: Tyler Perry and Reuben Cannon
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Alexander Gruszynski (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Maysie Hoy

COMEDY/DRAMA/ROMANCE

Starring: Tyler Perry, Derek Luke, Keshia Knight Pullman, David Mann, Tamela J. Mann, RonReaco Lee, Ion Overman, Vanessa Ferlito, Viola Davis, Sofia Vergara, and Robin Coleman

In the seventh Tyler Perry movie (the sixth Perry has directed), his most popular character, the matriarch Mabel “Madea” Simmons, finally lands in jail in the film, Madea Goes to Jail. Madea’s commotions aside, this film’s primary focus is on the efforts of an up and coming attorney to save a former classmate from a life of drug addiction and prostitution.

A high speed car chase lands Madea (performed by Tyler Perry in drag) on the steps of the jail, but a technicality allows her another in a long line of reprieves. However, Madea’s anger management issues lead to an outrageous act of violence that finally earns her a stiff prison sentence. Madea’s eccentric family, including her daughter, Cora (Tamela J. Mann), and Cora's father, Brown (David Mann), rally behind her and lead the effort to free Madea.

Meanwhile, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Hardaway (Derek Luke), who is on the fast track to career success, reunites with an old friend, Candace Washington (Keshia Knight Pullman), who is a drug addict and prostitute known to customers and colleagues as “Candy.” Joshua is determined to get Candy cleaned up, off drugs, and off the streets, but they share a dark secret from their past, which seems to hamper efforts to heal Candy. Joshua’s fiancé and fellow ADA, Linda Davis (Ion Overman) is simply enraged at Joshua’s efforts to help Candy, and she plots to permanently separate the two.

Like Tyler Perry’s other films, Madea Goes to Jail is filled with broad comedy (quite a bit of it slapstick), Christian themes, and principles of forgiveness, healing, and redemption, but of all of his films, this is one comes across as the most shallow in its message. Perry’s films, by his own admission, are more than just entertainment; they are message films, so criticizing them on the basis on that message or how the message is delivered is legitimate.

Madea Goes to Jail is Perry’s most polished effort to date, in terms of technical and craft aspects of filmmaking. The direction is smooth, and Perry has cast a group of highly-qualified and veteran actors. These actors bring a sense of weighty drama to this occasionally very dark movie. When this movie was first released earlier this year (2009), much was made of former child star, Keshia Knight Pulliam’s turn as a drug-addicted prostitute. This faux controversy about Pulliam (who played Rudy Huxtable on The Cosby Show) missed the truth of the excellent dramatic performance given by the underestimated Pulliam – not to mention that such criticism missed excellent dramatic turns by Derek Luke and the recently Oscar-nominated Viola Davis (Doubt).

What Madea Goes to Jail should be criticized for is its ultimately dishonest and shallow message to its audience, in particularly Black women whose lives are in shambles because of drug addiction and because of past and present physical, mental, and sexual abuse. They suffer such abuse at the hands of loved ones. Madea Goes to Jail is actually a great film until the last 15 minutes or so. Tyler Perry is good at depicting suffering and anguish, but not as good when he suggests methods of healing. It is during the last 15 minutes of Madea Goes to Jail that Tyler Perry, as he rushes to tie everything in a feel-really-good, happy-ending bow, offers Christian platitudes (such as forgiveness) and self-help bromides as the cure for deep-rooted ills. When life gives you lemons, you make Jesus-flavored lemonade? I don’t think so.

I don’t begrudge Perry his happy endings, but if he must send messages, he is going to have to think seriously about the social and personal issues that he makes the centerpieces of his films. If he is going to offer answers and solutions, they should be more than “forgive and forget.” Otherwise, Madea Goes to Jail is an entertaining, at times exceptionally entertaining, film. But it could have been a truly important film.

7 of 10
B+

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

NOTES:
2010 Black Reel Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Supporting Actor” (Derek Luke)

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Review: "Meet the Browns" Movie Needs More Browns

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 54 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux


Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns (2008)
Running time: 100 minutes (1 hour, 40 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for drug content, language including sexual references, thematic elements, and brief violence
DIRECTOR: Tyler Perry
WRITER: Tyler Perry (based upon his play)
PRODUCERS: Tyler Perry and Reuben Cannon
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Sandi Sissel
EDITOR: Maysie Hoy

DRAMA/COMEDY

Starring: Angela Bassett, David Mann, Tamela J. Mann, Lance Gross, Chloe Bailey, Mariana Tolbert, Rick Fox, Sofia Vergara, Irma P. Hall, Frankie Faison, Margaret Avery, Jenifer Lewis, Lamman Rucker, Phillip Edward Van Lear, and Tyler Perry

Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns is a 2008 film based upon a 2004 play written by Perry (like many of his films). The film was later spun off into a cable television series of the same name.

The film focuses on Brenda Brown (Angela Bassett), a single mother living in inner city Chicago, with her three children: daughters Tosha (Chloe Bailey) and Lena (Mariana Tolbert), and her oldest child, Michael (Lance Gross), a talented high school basketball player. Struggling for years to make ends meet and keep her three kids off the street, Brenda loses her job when her company shuts down (on pay day!). Brenda is feeling very down when a letter from Georgia arrives announcing the death of the father she has never met.

Looking for a chance to get away, Brenda takes her family to an unnamed small town in Georgia for the funeral. Nothing could have prepared her, however, to meet the Browns, her long lost relatives. Crass and fun loving, this Southern clan welcomes Brenda and her children to raucous family get-togethers and lavish meals of traditional Southern fare. Brenda also once again encounters Harry Belton (Rick Fox), a basketball recruiter interested in Michael’s future who first visited the family in Chicago, but Brenda is suspicious of Harry’s intentions both towards her and her son. Meanwhile, back in Chicago, Michael is determined to help alleviate the family’s financial problems and begins to consider becoming a drug dealer. Should Brenda stay and fight it out in Chicago or return to her strange, new family in Georgia?

Like Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls, Meet the Browns is a drama with some humor. In a way, it also seems to be two movies – one focusing on Brenda and her family’s trials and tribulations in Chicago, and the other (the shorter of the two) focusing on Brenda’s small town relatives, the Browns. The parts of the film that take place in Chicago feature Perry’s usual besieged, single-parent melodrama, but it isn’t as good as what was in Daddy’s Little Girls. Frankly, except for a few sequences, the only part of Brenda-in-Chicago that I enjoyed was the delightful comic performance by Sofia Vergara as Brenda’s coworker and friend, Cheryl.

Meet the Browns is at its best when we are meeting the Browns, especially the wonderful Mr. Brown (David Mann), who is the main character of the spin-off television series. Jenifer Lewis also gives a salty comic turn as Vera Brown, and this film would have been better had Lewis had a bigger role. Former Los Angeles Laker, Rick Fox, gives an average performance, a bit stiff and dry, about what one would expect from former professional athletes taking up acting.

Another problem with this movie is that the lead actress, Angela Bassett, often seems out of place. There are moments when Bassett’s turn as Brenda Brown is pitch-perfect and poignant, but there are indeed moments when Bassett overacts and Brenda comes across as shrill. It is a testament to her skill that those bad moments don’t overwhelm the entire performance, as well as the movie

Audiences that enjoy Tyler Perry’s usual mixture of moralizing, affection, and forgiveness mixed with boisterous comedy and mockery will enjoy Meet the Browns, although as Perry films go, it is not one of his better films.

5 of 10
B-

Monday, July 19, 2010