wacthingcrew: Madea Simmons, No. 4 - Madea Goes to Jail (2009)

When you hear the title Madea Goes to Jail, what do you picture? Madea going to jail, right?

I mean, especially when Meet the Browns concluded, entirely without reference to that movie’s own plot, with Madea Simmons nabbed during a car chase. Which suggests Goes to Jail isn’t just another titular misdirect, like Madea’s Family Reunion (where Madea is but a minor character). Rather, you picture an entry where Madea, Tyler Perry’s very own Jay and Silent Bob rolled up into a single massive, gun-crazed grandmother, graduates from recurring comic relief up to lead.

I’d steeled myself for such circumstances, which frankly sounds more like a Martin Lawrence movie. I’d even anticipated commenting upon contemporaneous criticisms from the impossible-to-please Spike Lee and Aaron McGruder, faulting Perry for proliferating outdated Sambo-type black stereotypes, aimed directly at inexplicably receptive audiences. I imagined comparing Madea to Lawrence’s Big Momma’s House, before breaking out the big guns and citing Eddie Murphy’s entire non-sci-fi career over the past 15 years – with special focus upon Norbit. Instead I was somehow surprised to find Madea Goes to Jail is just another Tyler Perry joint.

Make no mistake, Madea is in Jail (but not jail) far more than any of her other movies. In a sense, this is Perry exploring how his most famous creation would function when made the focus. What he finds out is…he’s really much more comfortable with the same weepy melodramas as always. Tyler Perry’s oeuvre has been fantastically bipolar, between regressive ethnic humor and turgid after school specials. With signs of schism, Madea Goes to Jail fully emerges at Perry’s mightiest Jekyll and Hyde creation, those two dichotomous halves thoroughly separating into their own physical entities, which just happen to reside in the same movie.

Perry in the best of times never mixed his drama or comedy well. No, the closest to success he ever came was punctuating an emotional monologue with a fart joke – I’m serious, it’s right there in Diary of a Mad Black Woman! He’s seemingly gotten worse at it over time, as now every comic character does duty in Madea’s half of the picture, leaving not a single joke to lighten up the harrowing exploration of drug addiction and prostitution which is the other half. We’re well into the realm of Perry formula now, so there’s no chance either section’ll work for the uninitiated (…

[Let it be known that at this point in writing, having somehow just started a parenthetical, I lost track and interest, distracted by video games and the endlessly alluring stupid shit of the Internet. …We return now, several days later, with interest and memory seriously waning, as I struggle to find something to say about it…]

Okay, where was I? So, Madea Goes to Jail is a comedy movie and a drama movie stitched together. Perhaps as individual pieces, they represent an evolution of Tyler Perry’s abilities. At the very least, I laughed generously at some of the Madea moments – She has a “Who’s on First” style routine with Dr. Phil of all people (himself), all around the idea of “getting got” and if Phil “gets” the “getting” that Madea’s got to say. That’s clever, as somehow is a Lou Ferrigno reference, so at the moment I haven’t the energy or inclination to delve into the potentially troubling racial aspects some see in Madea.

The drama is disconnected, apart from a vague opening legal theme – Our melodrama performers won’t be united with Madea’s universe until the titular going to jail in the Third Act. When examining Perry’s formula, this drama is an interesting reversal. In the usual relationship of a good, decent, hard-working upwardly mobile black person and an evil, privileged partner, it’s shocking that here the male is the good guy, and the female vilified. Perhaps all as a response to Perry’s apparent anti-male bias – no man who happily gives cameos to the screaming harpies of “The View” is totally OK with his gender, and I mean the utmost offense when I cite “The View” as one of the worst things our culture has provided, and I’m totally too lacking in wherewithal right now to be either tactful or overly vitriolic about it.

Okay, whatever. The good person is Joshua – Derek Luke, for whatever reason denied an actual credit due to his immense recognizablility, like so many Perry leading men. Turns out that’s because Luke won an ISA Award for Antwone Fisher in 2002. He’s at the forefront of modern pop culture, he is! Joshua’s fiancé is Linda (Ion Overman) – and I should’ve been able to identify her villainy from the very onset, as she’s not the sufficiently right kind of black (or any black) for Perry to praise to the heavens. She’s Latina, therefore evil.

So one of Josh’s friends is Candice “Candy” Washington (Keshia Knight Pulliam, one of “The Cosby Show’s” children), now a strung-out, desperate Atlanta prostitute. Josh went to college with her – they were the only students to come from the ghetto – and he wishes to help out his good friend now. Linda, as a Tyler Perry villain, is cartoonishly opposed to Josh’s philanthropic instincts; she insists, to sum her life philosophy up, that no good deed is ever appropriate, because those in need really are irredeemable harlots. It’s difficult to imagine a person this closed to the mere idea of discussing helping. Once Goes to Jail has concluded, Linda the prosecutor shall prove to be wholly mean-spirited for absolutely no reason, padding the rap sheets of criminals already guaranteed jail time, not for career gain or a sense of the benefits of incarceration or any of that, but just because Linda heedlessly spreads evil and meanness willy-nilly. I think this is what Chaotic Evil is like.

This being a Tyler Perry joint, there are further revelations in the Josh-Linda-Candy triangle, and indeed we’ll end on a variation of events formerly seen in Madea’s Family Reunion. A wedding shall end in runaway-groom (after one of those perfectly-written impassioned spur-of-the-moment speeches, natch). Josh does end up with Candy, who’s reformation is mostly just assumed once she’s been wrung through her narrative wringer – struggles with crack and pimps, then jail time alongside Madea (when the plots finally merge). Some tertiary characters (non-evil ones) suggest Candy’s genuine challenge in recovering from her lifestyle, but Perry uses the prison interim to glom on the gospel music and the treacly sentiments so we get that Hallmark happiness instead.

Well…My head is clearing up a bit with writing – I was pretty danged down in the dumps when I resumed this post. Nonetheless, I’m going to be pretty light on Madea Goes to Jail, and I am truly, genuinely, seriously sorry for finking out on two Typer Perry movies in a row. I promise promise promise I’ll give I Can Do Bad All By Myself a healthier consideration, and really the best thing to do now is to leave Goes to Jail be, and recover my élan. Farewell.