Madea Simmons, No. 5 - I Can Do Bad All By Myself (2009)

I’m pleased to say when I am wrong, especially when it means enjoying a movie, and I Can Do Bad All By Myself is far and away the best Tyler Perry movie I have seen!

Going back to Madea Goes to Jail… It’s by no means the worst Perry movie – though I’m not sure which one exactly is – but it sort of represents Perry bottoming out. This is odd, because the individual ingredients of Goes to Jail are themselves decent, but it’s the most artless merging of comedy and drama imaginable. It highlights the fundamental tonal problem with Perry’s work, and it fails more by being an attempt to over-utilize Madea Simmons, Perry’s irascible comic grandmother. It’s against Perry’s personal instincts to do pure comedy, when he mostly loves marrying it with sincere melodrama, and divorcing those distinct personalities so wholly was clearly uncomfortable for him.

Now, about I Can Do Bad All By Myself (or ICDBABM, which sounds like a ballistic missile)… On paper, it seems just as stagnated as Perry’s lesser efforts: Yes another adaptation of one of his plays, following the same formula as always – see Madea’s Family Reunion for perhaps the strongest manifestation of that formula. But apart from a shared name, ICDBABM is actually an original work, made specifically for the cinema – so Perry’s direction is more immediate, more honest, as he finds a way to remain in his formulaic comfort zone, yet still evolve as an artist.


Of greatest interest from my perspective, Perry has learned how to use Madea (and his comedy as a whole) far more elegantly. Madea remains the comic relief, same as always, except now she’s truly a relief. She’s our direct access into today’s isolated dramatics – needed, since audiences come primarily for Madea’s antics, and stay for the heart-warming drama. So jumping right in, one night Madea finds three children downstairs trying to steal her VCR and other Georgia valuables. When asked, these urchins (Kwesi Boakye, Freddy Siglar, Hope Olaidè Wilson) cannot account for their mother – who’s long dead (of a crack addiction, the standard Tragic Past™ of all Perry’s personas) – nor their current grandmother guardian. And it’s nicely efficient, how this gets Madea tied up with needy people who aren’t a part of her ridiculously extended family – Any chance to escape Madea’s relatives, especially the Browns (whom we met in Meet the Browns, then grew sick of in Goes to Jail), is most welcome. (The like-titled play revels in the Browns, so were really dodged a bullet with this one – unfunnier versions of the intermittently funny Madea that they are.)

Once Madea has deposited the three little beasts off at their nearest kin, April (Taraji P. Henson, a singer and Academy Award nominee – for Benjamin Button), she goes on her separate way. This isn’t the end of Madea’s presence, but she’s inadvertently served as master of ceremonies into our main plot.

Saying my peace on Madea, she remains a minor presence, a surrogate mother figure for the children. They briefly work for her, paying off the damages from their botched robbery. And most importantly (as Madea is relief), whenever dramatics in the to-be-discussed main plot become too much, the kids seek Madea’s solace. Thus she gets to run through her regular routine – dispensing foolishly knowing wisdom, arguing with pothead brother Joe (who is played, like Madea, by Perry in full “SNL” mode), otherwise running through low but effective comedy (be it ethnic, fart or stoner). Perry’s comedic instincts have improved dramatically, best exemplified by an extended misrepresentation of the Life of Christ, which anachronizes up all biblical figures, and also somehow Sigfried & Roy and something called “Cedric the Billy Goat” (presumably one of the “Twelve Disciplines”).

Like I said, this is relief, for the home situation Madea has foisted these three random children on is pretty trying. And most amazingly, it’s a genuine drama…not melodrama, drama! Perry has grown beyond his farcically plotted pseudo-realistic grotesqueries, and so April (the kids’ aunt, it must be said) emerges as the most fascinating Perry character I’ve come across.


Structurally, April is the usual Perry heroine, in a go-nowhere relationship with an unmistakable villain, soon romanced by an alarmingly decent man, seeking to fix her life. But it’s all presented with more finesse than usual. April is not a symbolic cipher, awaiting plot convolutions to rescue her from fate; she is a deeply flawed person, whose problems are entirely of her own doing. (It all falls back to that title, I Can Do Bad All By Myself, which – when translated into “white” – can be rendered as I Suck Without Your Help.)

April’s circumstance is presented with respectable efficiency. She sings at the Club Indigo (an easy way for Perry to justify the jazz clubs he’d give us anyway). She is in an affair with married man Randy (Brian White, also of Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls). She’s regularly drunk. Otherwise, literally all of April’s time is spent asleep in bed, all day long. It’s kind of an over-literal representation of her inner turmoil, but it’s far more elegant than the external struggles we normally get. And with all this, she’s barely prepared to care for her sister’s children – and as circumstances develop, it’s clear April is the only person these kids have, lest they get split up into foster homes.


Against all of April’s woozy protestations, her young charges shall be the catalyst for her turnaround. For now, though, let’s look at Randy – the designated obvious villain paramour. The type is a character-as-plot-device, and Perry has become self-aware enough to whittle away those characteristics which no longer work now the “melo” has been dropped. So Randy isn’t wealthy, isn’t a long-term prospect for April…he’s just an asshole. Minus that soap opera baggage, Randy’s villainy resembles a real world version of domestic terrorism…Perry does well to serve his audience with dramatized familial issues like this.

And while with time we get April’s vengeance, her turnaround abuse and even bathtub torture (incredibly similar to Diary of a Mad Black Woman), it seems Perry’s grown aware of his double-standard regarding inter-gender violence…When April threatens to murder a bathing Randy with her radio, we’re not meant to cheer her liberation, but fear she’s hit rock bottom. It’s a nicely self-critical move on Perry’s part, and he emerges a stronger artist for correcting some of his former problems.


Randy’s counterpart is good man Sandino (Adam Rodriguez). Perry corrects his former faults with this type as well, losing all of the fantasy world perfections he’d formerly wallowed in. Sandino is a refreshingly believable guy, who just happens to be decent. Hell, he doesn’t even conform to Perry’s standard of male beauty…at least, not until he shaves. Then Sandino retains Perry’s beloved perma-stubble, though he still differs from his formers by being unmistakably Hispanic (Columbian, to be specific, but don’t tell Randy) rather than just a light-skinned black guy. Perhaps it’s penance for all the evil Latinas we’ve gotten before – except for the always-vivacious Sofia Vergara (not seen today), who’s never come off poorly.

Knowing Perry’s formula, it’s evident Sandino is destined to fall in love with April, and vice versa…oh, and they’ll get married at the end, because Perry remains resolute in his condemnation of extramarital affairs. For the time being, there’s no evidence of this inevitability, without reference to the greater Perry meta narrative. Rather, Sandino is just a recently-immigrated handyman put up by the church in April’s basement, who takes a liking to her three itinerant minors even when she won’t and –

The church! That deserves some focus. It’s been no secret ever since Perry’s first play (let alone movie) that he’s a devout Christian, and unafraid to depict the faith in his films. I approve of this impulse, even when Perry’s artistry isn’t grand enough to really do it justice. It’s a moral stance which is refreshingly bold, and a major reason for Perry’s guaranteed niche audience. Having said all that, I’ve been surprised at how little faith has played into his films in the interim between Diary and Myself. Oh, there’s still been some chuchiness on hand, but just habitual references, not a dedicated place in the narrative.


…Well, ICDBABM restores the balance, making the church at least as powerful a presence as Madea herself…actually, a far huger entity than she, fat suit and all. As represented by Pastor Brian (Marvin Winans, actual gospel singer), the church is a major part in April’s slow reconstruction. This is a simpler message than the occasional “faith in sassy black women of a specific generation” platitude Perry sometimes delivers, and not as reductive. You might agree with Perry’s basic religiousness, you may not, but this angle certainly serves him well.

There’s not a lot more to say specifically about April’s restoration, for a simple character drama like this one oughtn’t to be heavy on the plot. Rather, I’ll ask you this: Seems like there’s been a decent smattering of singers in the cast, right? And that’s without me even pointing out that Gladys Knight is loitering around! Oh, and Mary J. Blige too – who’s apparently more successful than Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey, if Wikipedia is to be believed. Why’s my white ass never heard of her?!


Oh, there’s a reason for all these singers! It’s a part of the patented, FDA-approved Tyler Perry Formula. Only we’ve never seen it before, if we’re only limiting ourselves to the movies, but his plays also double as musicals. Each features a strong eight or so recycled R&B/gospel standards, and ICDBABM follows suit…In fact, to my utmost surprise, this movie is a musical, rare in our days, with every song totally justified within the film (a club performance, a church worship, etc.).

I say, Perry has discovered the way to most efficiently communicate his emotions directly to us. Many of his former works boast that beginning playwright’s best friend, the overlong monologue (which ICDBABM doesn’t boast, but for Madea’s aforementioned Bible tirade, which is acceptable for its jokiness). Perry the movie director now learns this medium’s ropes, and presents emotional change through song instead – it’s a non-verbal technique, and ICDBABM is a fine repository for soulful musical performances even if you’re uninterested in the underlying dramatic/comic framework.


A great deal of the movie’s running time is taken up with songs, which do a good job of eating up minutes that might otherwise be inhabited by inappropriate non sequitur Madea routines. It’s an easy-going approach, and Perry does a good job of letting the performers do their thing. He is not particularly equipped with a visual acumen – between that and a recurring comic side character, Perry really is like the Kevin Smith for middle-aged black women – so Perry is wise to utilize his stage-honed skills with actors instead. Of course, what I’m enjoying most about these latter Perry movies might be just what others dislike about his ouvre – it helps to watch these on a Sunday (as I just did, regardless of whatever day this ends up getting posted on…Saturday), and to be unironically receptive to Perry’s general decency. With prolonged exposure, I’ve learned to accept some of his idiosyncratic deficiencies, for the result is forever interesting.

Then again, even with some renewed vigor, it’s hard to find new things to say about these movies. Either they work for ya, or they don’t; if they do, you’re likely already a fan, and that’s all there is to it.


What’s interesting to me now, on the eve of Madea’s Big Happy Family (can you feel it in the air?) is how this series can be thought of specifically as the Madea Simmons franchise. Even though I’ve spent the majority of my energies examining Madealess dramatics, I’m starting to feel that she defines these movies nonetheless. For Tyler Perry’s filmography is defined by hope, even when 95% of the running time is mired in seemingly insurmountable personal ordeals and other such nonsense. Having Madea as a dichotomous lens through which to view those hardships promises a turnaround. She may seem completely out of place with the dramatic tone – a fat-suited cross-dressing outdated Mammy stereotype trafficking in archaic buffoonery and honking perpetually like a goose doesn’t quite fit in with gritty ghetto dramas – but with greater control over his films, that’s entirely Perry’s point.

With today’s sermon (er, the movie’s message) concerning Job and the nature of suffering under a loving God (love too is featured strongly, in a nicely parallel manner), let’s talk about Good and Evil. It is often said one extreme is best highlighted in contrast to the other. With storytelling in general usually so unable to dramatize goodness, having Madea as the “good” is useful. She’s not simply a drama-free variation on the “evil” dramatics our heroines must overcome; she inhabits a wholly different genre! Her comedy becomes funnier when artfully contrasted with temporary suffering (a hard balance to pull off). Madea, for all her contradictory sins and ignorance and ridiculousness, represents a constant ideal for our transitory protagonists to aspire towards. And now I’m officially reading too much into Tyler Perry movies.


RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)
• No. 2 Madea's Family Reunion (2006)
• No. 3 Meet the Browns (2008)
• No. 4 Madea Goes to Jail (2009)
• No. 6 Madea's Big Happy Family (2011)

Madea Simmons, No. 6 - Madea's Big Happy Family (2011)

With Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family, my Perry education is now complete. I have stoically observed his previous Madea Simmons films in the lonesome silence of my own apartment. Now I go to the theaters, and get a much fuller sense of the Cult of Perry, seeing appreciative audience reaction as an actual, living and breathing phenomenon, not just a hypothetical event.

And not just any theater! Southside Chicago, where I was the one and only white person in attendance, excepting this one very confused looking elderly man. Otherwise, that statistic that Perry’s audience is 65% middle-aged black women, that held up very true. And having browsed the YouTubes, having seen the sort of raucous hooting and hollering that accompanies every moment of Perry’s Chitlin’ Circuit live Madea performances (oh yes, Big Happy Family is derived from a stage play just like most of the rest), I can attest that the cinematic experience is somewhat similar. It’s not as extreme, as sans live actors there’s no one to benefit from a packed-to-the-gills stadium shouting advice and stomping their feet and my god, but this is easily the most excitable, emotionally-driven movie audience I’ve ever been in attendance with, and that includes gung-ho midnight screenings for things like Grindhouse.

Given all that, it’s hard for me to say if Big Happy Family is indeed Tyler Perry’s funniest Madea movie, or if I’m simply seeing laughter in moments where personally I wouldn’t. It’s kind of telling, to see the loutish and loud behavior of Perry’s fat-suited, cross-dressing anti-church-lady Mammy archetype Madea embraced so wholeheartedly. Even a centuries-old “ham isn’t pig” joke goes over like gangbusters, as though it were just being discovered. Likely that gag, like most of the rest, are not new to anyone, but viewers love the familiarity of it all. It’s a familiarity I trust comes from a certain black generational experience, but it’s become my familiarity as well, simply through the formulaic repetition of the Tyler Perry enterprise.


So as I’ve focused, the viewing audience is what made Madea’s Big Happy Family, which I’m sure I wouldn’t have too much to say about on its own. It’s a Tyler Perry joint, we know what and we’re getting into now in 2011. A heady, tone-deaf mixture of comedy and melodrama, interspersed with scant musical numbers (not nearly as many as in I Can Do Bad All By Myself, lamentably), all dwelling upon the black experience in Georgia. There will be laughter and tears, each as hyper-intensified as the other, with emotion so strong my cracker ass didn’t even know it existed. And Madea will be there, likely with nary anything to do with the greater one-off melodramata, except for a stern plot-resolving talk near the end.

All that applies to Big Happy Family, which surprisingly excises a major part of the Perry production formula: There is no love triangle surrounding a professional black woman, whose personal quest for self-betterment is couched in the dramatics of choosing the obvious hero over the obvious villain. There’s none of that here, making the story purely familiar. Perhaps that’s why this film seems more comedic, more ramshackle than some of Perry’s other work. Boy if it didn’t work on the clientele! So even when the heartstrings oppressively pop up on the soundtrack to signal to a still-guffawing theater that it’s time to weep, everything is phrased in a far more conscious version of the “coonery buffoonery” Spike Lee laments so.


Central in Big Happy Family is Shirley (Loretta Devine), mater familias to the intended “big happy family” – and in celebration of dramatic irony, a more dysfunctional brood I cannot fathom. Every family member is a window into a new subplot of hardship and intrapersonal feuding. Daughter Tammy (Natalie Desselle-Reid) is enraged at her husband Harold (Rodney Perry – evidently no relation) – and it’s never clear exactly why.

Tammy’s sister Kimberly (Shannon Kane, of “All My Children,” to indicate on what level these films function), having become wealthy and attractive, is the designated evil one, and is enraged at her entire family – and it’s never clear exactly why. Kimberly’s also married to the Old Spice guy, which is endlessly amusing.

Their little brother Byron (Shad “[Lil’] Bow Wow” Moss – yes, the rapper) is the prototypical Perry “good man,” in that he represents all the virtues of Jesus-loving, straight-laced goodness, which never jibes with his recent felonious past – and it’s never clear exactly why. We’re talkin’ debates on whether he’s the baby-daddy, on who’s the baby-momma, maybe even uncertainty on who the baby-baby is.

But the focus remains upon momma Shirley, who’s just learned she has inoperable cancer, and has around a month to live. She too represents Perry’s strangely distinct conception of selfless, saintly goodness, so much so that her conflict is she cannot tell her family she has cancer. This drives the story. It’s not that Shirley doesn’t want to, but she wants to tell everyone at once – and her children are all prone to hyper-emotional outbursts at the drop of a hat. Thus the movie is structured like a farce, without that element ever being a joke. Shirley struggles to engineer family dinners, only for some new melodrama to interrupt her every time she’s about to drop the cancer bomb. Phrased that way, it sounds like Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, though I’m surely the only audience member who thought that. It’s kind of a weird conceit to center a drama around, but it’s really a framing device for the panoply of interchangeable dilemmas Perry’s cooked up for us this time.

Shirley’s family is plenty buffoonish on the face of it – I mean both intentionally (nearly every cast member accomplishes some laughs, at least in the audience’s opinion), and unintentionally (any attempt at civil discourse is preempted with a “No, you don’t get to talk to me!” diatribe, hence the perpetual dramatic fuel). Some of the laughs are extremely aggravating – I’m thinking specifically of Byron’s baby-momma, who’s given to saying his name as follows [cough]: “Byrooooooooooo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oooooooooon!” (And that’s one of her shorter outbursts – Perry drops hints this woman might actually be retarded, to be blunt.)


To this, add Shirley’s confidant, Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis, Perry regular), an obese, aging pothead grandmother given to obscene, sassily unexpected outbursts. In essence, she’s the distilled moxie of reoccurring characters Madea and Joe, so much that once the opening scene is over, I figured this movie hardly needed Madea at all.

How wrong I was (naturally, for otherwise I wouldn’t be seeing this). Madea’s still around, though there’s little of her schtick we don’t see in other Big Happy Family members. Not that the audience minded; they still welcomed Madea’s repetitive antics with great joy, erupting into applause at every utterance of “Halleleryah, praise der Lort [sic]!” As is often the case, it seems there’s barely any reason, narratively, for Madea to be present. Bam could just as easily do as Madea does, could yell at the cast come climax as a panacea for their lifelong dysfunction, and provide relief in the interim. But Madea’s still there, because she’s a carrot to draw audiences in – and based upon last night’s screening, Perry’s comedy is appreciated far more than his dramatics, in that old “honey on the wormwood” notion of Lucretius’.


And it’s not just Madea (and Joe) who reappear. The central Meet the Browns figures return too (not pictured), for as much as I hoped they’d disappear if I simply didn’t type a lot about them. So we’re talkin’ Madea’s fifty-something daughter Cora (Tamela Mann) and her presumed “baby-daddy” Mr. (Leroy) Brown (David Mann – really Tamela’s husband, which direly confuses matters). Actually, the Madea family tree confuses me immensely, especially as it differs from the stage play tree (not live I’ve seen ‘em). Without even determining how Madea is connected to Shirley (reedit: she’s her niece), I spent so very much of Big Happy Family struggling to deduce how everyone was connected. It turns out that incest is avoided, but just barely! And then the plot conspires to confuse the issue re: baby-daddies towards the end, worsening everything.

Anyway, the Browns, like Bam, function as alternate Madeas in Madea’s absence. Though they’re normally in Madea’s presence. Actually, Brown’s tale of diabetes and medical anal intrusions (to inform you as to these films’ humor level) is meant to parallel Shirley’s cancer, like a classical comedic mirror. And people seem to like the Browns. This particular duo has always flummoxed me, especially Mr. Brown’s downright off-putting demeanor – I doubt I could affect a nasal speaking pitch that high, to say nothing of his eye-damaging wardrobe.

Actually, watching a Tyler Perry movie in the fullest technological powers of the local cinema, there are some unpleasantries to go along with the wonderful audience – many of whom must’ve seen the play, to go by their pre-quoting of lines. Nearly every single character (especially baby-momma – “Byroooooooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnn!”) has settled upon the most aurally unpleasant possible tone – and these people speak fast. Actually, speed of speech is a good indicator of how comic something seems to be. If watching this in silence at home, just picture raucous applause whenever someone, anyone, plows her words together like an auctioneer. I’ll admit it’s not my comedic cup of tea, and my ears were ringing for quite a while afterwards…Still, there is a reasonable amount of humor in here, even to my jaded self.


A few more observations, regarding Perry’s notion of morality. It’s been an ongoing fact that he outright abhors upper class blacks (excepting perhaps himself – cough!), that achieving wealth turns one shallow, vicious and soulless. This is old hat by now. Rather, I am astounded at Perry’s evident conclusions about morality re: body type. Something like 90% of Big Happy Family’s female cast is morbidly obese, and we’ talkin’ short, squat women that are literally 3.5 feet wide! This is downright unhealthy, especially when such a physique necessitates vertical waddling. To a one (and I’m counting Madea as one of the fat ladies, even though Perry plays “her”), these fat women are pure, good, gentle, exude all the righteous qualities.

On the other hand, you’ve got your thin, attractive, young black women – every one is evil! Sure, it’s visual shorthand, like slapping a black hat on your western bad guy, but come on. Stereotypically, Perry’s main audience is overweight black women, who want reassurance that their image is proper, and women diverging from them are hateful harpies. (Perry sure can temper his artistic impulses to deliver to an identified target audience.)

This doesn’t stop well-built, shirtless men from being good, in Perry’s eyes…that is, on the occasions when his strange reverse-misogyny doesn’t condemn the male gender altogether (no wonder the man cross-dresses). If there’s anything fat black women love more than hating on feminine thinness, it’s the chance to appreciatively ogle beefcake. Actually, there’s a whole lot of double standards in Perry’s oeuvre – Madea is faithless, yes the films are Christian; beating children is wrong, yet Madea is celebrated specifically for smacking them with hammers; if you’re toned, light-skinned and male, you’re OK, otherwise no; if you’re female, better be chunky; if you’re white, well, then you’re just SOL!

In retrospect, do I recommend Big Happy Family or not? Hard to say. I had a hell of a good time watching it, though I don’t think the movie is the reason. Seeing it with the Perry faithful sure was informative; I’m sore tempted to seek out a traveling Chitlin’ Circuit performance, and complete this arc. As for the movie itself…well…let’s let the movie have the final say. For I found myself thinking throughout, “Just who are these people, whose lives are so fraught with emotional incompetence?!” It’s a life I’ve never known, coming from many generations of emotionless stoics. My conclusion was that “Boy, these people sure seem like those bizarre caricatures on daytime talk TV.”


And lo and behold, Big Happy Family climaxes on “Maury!” This is perfectly believable, these characters appear simply that bereft of self-consciousness. And let that stand as the final word on Madea’s Big Happy Family. Former Perry works idolized “The View” and “Dr. Phil.” This one continues that midday hagiography. (“Oprah” is never outright addressed, though she basically commands the whole Perry empire.) Whatever your opinions are regarding Maury Povich, well…the same likely goes for Tyler Perry.

And here I leave off the Madea Simmons franchise, possibly still in utero. Tyler Perry is liable to return to his old battleaxe when the financial inspiration strikes him, though chances are just as likely he’ll forge on without her, to his arguable artistic improvement. The Madea plays are largely sapped now – the only one still unadapted is “Madea’s Class Reunion,” which was, as I understand, largely worked into Madea’s Family Reunion anyway. Though I could’ve said all this upon the conclusion of Perry’s previous Madea-centric adventure. “Madea’s Big Happy Family,” the play, didn’t come about until 2010. The character continues strong. If this cinematic Big Happy Family truly is Madea’s final outing, and there’s no indication it is, then it’s a good enough sendoff.

…But then, we still don’t know who every single baby-daddy is, so let’s count that as a cliffhanger…

Praise der Lort! And remember, dial 1-800-CHOKE-THAT-HO, for all your ho-choking needs.


RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)
• No. 2 Madea's Family Reunion (2006)
• No. 3 Meet the Browns (2008)
• No. 4 Madea Goes to Jail (2009)
• No. 5 I Can Do Bad All By Myself (2010)

Madea Simmons, No. 3 - Meet the Browns (2008)

Let us assume directors (the auteur ones) constantly evolve, and create for themselves new artistic challenges. This goes for the greats as well as the crummy ones, which is why Uwe Boll movies are now merely absolutely wretched instead of soul-rottingly, apocalyptically cataclysmic. In the case of Boll, who’ll never be within a continent of good, this makes his movies less fun, for they lose their flavor. It’s kind of the same thing with Tyler Perry.

Now, I don’t intend to examine directors as such; our focus is franchises. It just so happens that the Madea Simmons franchise is the product of a single writer-director-producer-actor-playwright-visionary. As the recurring Madea character is simply one aspect of his larger personal quest, Perry’s own aim (one presumes) is not to rely solely upon his beloved Madea, but avoid stagnation and move beyond her. And Perry did just that following Madea’s Family Reunion, releasing two 2007 pictures (Daddy’s Little Girls and Why Did I Get Married?) which aren’t only completely Madea-free, a whole one of ‘em isn’t even an adaptation of one of Perry’s plays. I did not watch these.

Here the hope is that Perry can find commercial (and artistic?) success. In that, he’s been triumphant, with each movie doing about as well as the one before – enough that without familiarity with his oeuvre, they surely all blur together. Artistically…who’s to say? Glancing ahead at Perry’s résumé suggests he cannot move beyond play adaptations, Madea or no, which is kind of disappointing.

Play adaptations like Meet the Browns. Of courses any Tyler Perry joint covered here is likely to be an adaptation, for that’s from whence Madea emerged. So by definition we’re looking at possibly some of Perry’s less exceptional film work. But here’s the thing: “Meet the Browns,” the play, it doesn’t even have Madea in it. Nor does “What’s Done in the Dark,” from which Perry actually pilfers most of his plot (the film’s production is so close to that of “What’s Done in the Dark” that this was likely a single macro-project for Perry).


Indeed, 98% of Meet the Browns seems equivalent to those parts of the Perry Saga we’ve skipped over. Madea only appears right before the end, with under three minutes screen time. Still, that let’s ‘em get Madea featured in all the trailers, like Vin Diesel’s cameo in Tokyo Drift. This is the danger of defining a franchise by a character alone. We’re but one step away from calling Wayne’s World in continuity with Terminator 2, simply because the T-1000 is in both of them.

For my purposes, there then isn’t a lot of Meet the Browns I have to examine. Here’s all of it: Madea and her brother Joe (both Tyler Perry in his beloved fat suit) engage the police in a high speed pursuit. Madea is arrested.

Forsooth, this is but a preview for the later Madea Goes to Jail (with the Madea-less non-adaptation The Family That Preys falling in between). If this were just slapped on the end, I’d call it an embedded preview, such as that for Back to the Future Part III within Back to the Future Part II. Twere that so, this’d arguably not belong to the franchise. But that’s not the case! Madea’s arrest is integrated into the larger focus of Meet the Browns. Supporting characters watch it on TV – this is some pretty meager integration, and if Perry were a Spike Lee type, I’d almost say it was a veiled critique of race relations or some old thing. And so it has no – and I mean N-O – connection to anything else in this movie. It’s mostly just a cheap ploy, a way to maximize theatrical butts among those faithful solely to Madea (like me). Add to that a minor character’s throwaway admission an hour that she is Madea’s illegitimate daughter, and that’s it.

For the Meet the Browns audience not completely immersed in the greater Madea legendarium, this moment must seem thoroughly without precedent. It’d be totally random, pointless and left field.

At this stage, I’m not beholden to consider the rest of Meet the Browns…but I’ll do so anyway. Though most briefly. Because it largely answers the question of Perry’s directorial evolution.

Sort of surprisingly, it seems Perry has learned from some of his old artistic criticisms. Meet the Browns, while still a comic melodrama with an uneven tone, isn’t as egregious in its exaggeration, arch characters or artificial plot devices as, say, Diary of a Mad Black Woman. And therein lies its problems. Perry has removed many of his faults, but he hasn’t replaced them with anything new. And those faults were genuine products of his unwieldy passion. With a little more technical competence, but his own voice neutered, Perry delivers a mediocrity, something so mediocre it once resided on the IMDb Bottom 100. This is Perry’s Cop Out – hackwork from a guy who really shouldn’t be competing with the barely-there journeymen who make up Hollywood’s lowest barrel, simply because he’s more unique than that.


Perry knows only one form of story – not a problem; many an auteur is similar – and that story suffers from undernourishment. Thus again we’ve an older, self-sufficient black woman with kids – Brenda Brown (Angela Bassett, who is on paper the absolute best actress for parts like this). She suffers adversity, but this time there’s really no eeeeevil businessman suitor to contend with. Instead, she’s just out of a job and support her family. Cue the weeping. Then there’s the usual GOOD MAN to romance her for no reason, again played by Shemar Moore, recognizable enough now they don’t even give him a credit…Oh, no, wait, my bad, that’s actually lookalike Rick Fox. That explains why he plays a basketball player. But boy, Tyler Perry sure has a type when it comes to his bromance man-crushes!



Each Perry pic I’ve pondered seems to feature less conflict than the one before…possibly because that conflict is often so awkwardly unrealistic and wedged-in. So the sole conflict of Meet the Browns is Brenda’s inability to trust Harry (that’s the guy Rick Fox plays), because no man can be that GOOD of a MAN. When this hang-up appeared in Madea’s Family Reunion, it was dinky enough, but seeing it essentially stretched out to feature length doesn’t help matters. “You’re perfect! You can’t be perfect! Therefore I hate you! No, wait, you ARE actually perfect! I love you! Mmm-hmm!” So we’re just waiting for outside circumstances to conspire at the end to reveal Harry’s perfection to Brenda, so she knows he’s a GOOD MAN.

By the way, Brenda is one conactive heroine (um…what’s the antonym for “proactive?”). She does nothing to resolve her own movie, simply letting a loving god named Tyler Perry work things out for her.


Otherwise, Meet the Browns is just panoplies of subplots, not having anything to do with each other. For one thing, there’s the Browns – yeah, again somehow Perry’s titular characters are supporting buffoons, barely in their own movie. They live in Georgia, are fat, and are grotesque caricatures of outdated black stereotypes, played without irony. So basically the Browns are Madea, only younger, and performed by less motivated actors – David Mann, Jenifer Lewis, Margaret Avery, Frankie Faison.

Another subplot, which starts, transpires, then stops completely in isolation of any other plot development…Michael (Perry regular Lance Gross), Brenda’s high-school-aged 27-year-old son, decides one night to deal drugs. He gets shot in the back. One montage later, he’s completely healed from his injuries, then resumes his former basketball plotline with Harry as though nothing had ever happened.

With the plot progressing in this manner (and to call this one of Perry’s sturdier plots is to say something), it’s actually not too odd for Madea to drop in for a glorified cameo/preview.

I’m calling it quits ahead of schedule on Meet the Browns, not because I haven’t anything else to say, but because it won’t be pertinent to our Madea-centric exploration. So I’ll just let the remaining images spool out in silence…




…Oh! One more thing! “Meet the Browns” (aka “Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns”) is also a television series on TBS. It is a spinoff of the movie, partly, of the mostly unmined stageplay, partly, and also of some supporting characters from Perry’s other TV sitcom, “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne” – a show where certain Browns film actors play non-Browns characters alongside a different roster of Browns. Yes, there’s a strange, free-flowing continuity anarchy between Perry’s different media. And that’s without even addressing another TV spinoff the madman has in mind, the proposed “Floyd’s Family.”

Things are getting out of hand!


RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)
• No. 2 Madea's Family Reunion (2006)
• No. 4 Madea Goes to Jail (2009)
• No. 5 I Can Do Bad All By Myself (2010)
• No. 6 Madea's Big Happy Family (2011)

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.







RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)
• No. 2 Madea's Family Reunion (2006)
• No. 3 Meet the Browns (2008)
• No. 5 I Can Do Bad All By Myself (2010)
• No. 6 Madea's Big Happy Family (2011)

Madea Simmons, No. 2 - Madea's Family Reunion (2006)

The Tyler Perry phenomenon continues unabated. Due to the surprise success of Diary of a Mad Black Woman (well, a surprise to everyone not already familiar with Tyler Perry’s cult of personality), in one year Perry devised the sequel, Madea’s Family Reunion. In many ways it is an obviously engineered sequel, right down to the former film’s breakout character now becoming titular (that’d be Madea, oh you inattentive ones). Between that and the repetition/escalation of certain other Diary elements, it seems Perry was responding to audience’s reactions.

In a way, he was…except he did so first in 2001. As with Diary, Family Reunion is an adaptation of a like-titled Perry stage play, which was itself a sequel to the play Diary was derived from. So whatever improvements occur in Family Reunion, excepting those having wholly to do with film itself, were likely learned five years earlier. Without direct reference to those productions, there’s the likelihood Perry was stagnating artistically by simply recycling his old works. Surely, the minor evolution between Diary and Family Reunion suggests so much.

Of pistol-toting Mammy granny Madea Simmons (Tyler Perry forever in a fat suit), “she” was a breakout character long before film, first appearing in Perry’s 1999 “I Can Do Bad All By Myself.” (Yes you surely can!) Because I’m actually high-fallutin’ enough to have yesterday compared Madea to Shakespeare, I’ll do so again today and call her Perry’s Falstaff. She (and her elderly brother Joe, whom Perry also performs) is a raging, out-of-place comic id in an unrealistic but self-serious soap opera. They are popular beyond their narrative importance, and so it makes sense for Perry to progress towards his “Merry Wives of Windsor”/Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back moment, and promote Madea towards leading role. That doesn’t happen in Family Reunion (I have a suspicion that moment is in Madea Goes to Jail), but the movie suggests it shall, for it’s not often a character so ultimately trivial earns her name in the title. (Such as “Waiting for Godot” or The Wizard of Oz or Jason Goes to Hell.)


Madea is the carrot to lure audiences in, same in 2006 as in 2001. She’s the honey on the wormwood (a Lucretius reference now, for I’m in an antiquarian mood today). Otherwise, Family Reunion is but Diary Redux, as familiar plot strands get slightly restated. Again we have a self-respecting beautiful black woman seeking guidance, a wealthy but evil dark-skinned romantic partner, and an alternate love interest. And resolving these “Apartment 3G” hijinks, indirectly, is the sage and slangy advice of beloved Madea, Queen of all Atlanta.

Actually, events are so familiar from before, even two films in I am compelled to list out the Tyler Perry tropes as I see them:

- A vaguely powerful wealthy man, evidently Satan made flesh
- His soulful, silent suffering wife/fiancé
- The lighter-skinned, blue-collar man, good in every way, and a calculated foil to the baddie
- Court scenes to send the plot in its direction
- A child on crack, looking for help
- Joe and Madea’s “yo mama” routines
- Helicopter footage of Atlanta , accompanied with R&B standards
- The jazz club date
- Joe farts
- Easy listening montages to show the passage of time, every 15 minutes
- Life lessons delivered by a wise, sassy older black women (Madea optional)

Actually, I’m kinda surprised no one’s come out yet to parody this rigid format. The Wayans Brothers circa 1990 would be ideal (I can’t believe I’m saying this!), in a I’m Gonna Git You Sucka sorta way. I almost feel inspired to do so myself, yet my Scotch-English ancestry makes that an impossibility.


Anyway, plugging new specifics into Perry’s program yields the protagonists we’ll be dealing with in Family Reunion:

The evil, wealthy man: Carlos (Blair Underwood). His differences from Diary’s Charles: He is an investment banker, not an attorney. (Six of one, half a dozen of another…). Similarities: The name “Charles” – c’mon, “Carlos”?! An actor best known from televised legal dramas – now “L.A. Law” in favor of “The Practice.” We’re two minutes into the movie, by the way.

His wife – No, wait, no! Here we get some changes, for the central conflicted black woman – Lisa Breaux in this case (Rochelle Aytes) – is merely Carlos’ fiancé. Her conflict with hubby is the same as before, however – Carlos is abusive (physically, not emotionally as Charles). It is undeniably, uncomplicatedly obvious she must leave him, and it’s all the more morally simple to argue this from Perry’s Christian point of view when divorce doesn’t come into play. It’s also a lot easier to credit as a realistic scenario, helping Family Reunion’s melodrama immensely.

There are shockwaves from making the central relationship an engagement. For one, Lisa is somehow not in a position to romance the inevitable light-skinned good man – here called Frankie (Boris Kodjoe, primarily a fashion model just like Shemar Moore), and now a bus driver instead of a steel worker. This is because, I hypothesize, a love triangle like that would be difficult to engineer under the highly specific moral guideline Perry follows. Basically, I imagine only the Diary divorce scenario would allow it, and that’d be just too repetitive.


Instead, Frankie is tossed over to Lisa’s sister Vanessa (Lisa Arrindell Anderson), who is basically a variation on Lisa…No, wait, that’s not entirely true. For one thing, Vanessa’s romance with Frankie has nothing weighing it down, so there’s no reason this shouldn’t be pure wish fulfillment. Instead, conflict comes of Vanessa’s doubt that Frankie could be that great a guy. He wants marriage, then kids, all that, as does she. It’s only because Vanessa questions Tyler Perry’s Marty Stus as much as I do that she hesitates. Oh, that and she has a Dark, Molestation-Filled Past – this is something else which is one film away from becoming a Perry cliché.

Splitting plot duties for two female protagonists over one is kind of interesting. There is another central relationship in Madea’s Family Reunion (and no, it too has zilch to do with Madea). That’s the sisters’ mother, Vanessa (Lynn Whitfield, lookin’ gooooooood). If we accept a central Perry theme is familial dysfunction, then the schism and dichotomy between these three women is definitely of value. Basically, Vanessa is pro-Lisa and anti-Victoria. It is she above all else who demands the marriage to Carlos, for the wealth it’ll bring the family – when Victoria is considered a disappointment for her comfortable middle-class existence. “Wealth begets cartoonish evil,” this is a repeated Perry premise, and thus it’s harder to become dramatically invested in Vanessa’s scheming – these archetypal exaggerations are an enduring issue with Perry’s work.


Dramatic sloppiness remains the name of the game. Everything boils down to monologues, as all Perry seemingly knows is to supply his characters with thesis statements. There’s often not even a personality there, but merely a fictional construct (a character) engineered to soap box Perry’s beliefs re: family, love, the essence of blackness… So when Madea’s Family Reunion reaches its arguable dramatic crescendo (5/8ths of the way through), it manifests as Lisa, Victoria and Vanessa reciting multi-page treatises to each other.

(Scene-ending dialogue, indicative of the entire movie: “I’m going to pray that God has mercy on your soul.”)

Here we get to a shared common ground between the Vs (I’ll admit I was repeatedly confused by the naming here – and it doesn’t help an actress named Lisa doesn’t play the character called “Lisa”). That common ground: Molestation! Huzzah! Everyone recovers lost memories – Vanessa is the result of her grandmother whoring her mother out for tricks and ye gods man! Those who feel “empowered” by Perry’s movies (mostly people who are not snarky 20-something whitey film bloggers) feel connections between these scenes and their own lives. For all of the “Funky Winkerbean”-esque cancer death in my own past, I feel blessed I am unable to relate to these revelations, though…though…okay, is it just me, or do these movies just feel like dramatized versions of daytime TV?

That’s no coincidence. From Oprah didst Perry emerge (she’s his artistic inspiration), from Oprah then didst he get her all-important seal of approval – just like Obama! It’s with Madea’s Family Reunion that Perry’s motion pictures started receiving the Big O’s promotion, as weepy extensions of her own empire. Perry in turn becomes an unlikely male doppelganger for Miss Winfrey. It follows that his films, though often critiqued for their failure as movies qua movies, appeal to those reducing a story’s quality to its thesis statement. It’s called pandering to the base and it makes anything anyone outside of Perry’s cabal says about him completely flaccid.

I mean, look at the audience for this movie: 52% of Family Reunion’s audience were black women over 35! This is the exact opposite of a mainstream movie aiming for all four quadrants. The Madea movies are surely not bland, and are remarkably niche. With tremendous popularity within a specific group, they have a guaranteed box office nearing $65 million per film, with that also a guaranteed ceiling. There’s no room for expansion (outside of the U.S., they earn usually under $20,000 – entirely from Canada), but there’s no need for it.


Yes, far from movies as we know ‘em, these are diatribes for feel-good empowerment. When the long-awaited family reunion comes into play (still no word on Madea…), it is a chance for punditry. Perry manifests a gaggle of elder black women, to speak the single truth in this world to all the assembled generations. Led by great-great-great-grandmother May (Maya Angelou, basically playing herself – Pulitzer Prize winning poet of black womanhood), the brigade speechifies on the good ol’ ways and a return to family values.

It feels legitimately political, like Malcolm X meets Minister Farrakhan meets Mister Rogers – and here Perry speaks most specifically to the black experience, for his first truly racial commentary. Because the older women who watch these movies thoughtlessly espouse the ideals of some vague “few decades ago” as life’s ultimate perfection, that’s just what is argued here. It feels calculated, though I do not doubt Perry’s sincerity. What this ten minute pause isn’t is good storytelling. This reminds me most of Plato – that’s in terms of drama, and Plato wasn’t a dramatist. With the theme of love, it’s Tyler Perry’s “Phaedrus” or “Symposium.” (While in Greece, I’ll also admit for a while I thought “Madea” was “Medea,” Euripides’ play on a vengeful wife scorned. Turns out Perry never cites that drama.)


The fact that I keep referencing antique Western culture suggests there is little in Perry’s work which is distinctly cinematic. He remains the professional amateur, but with Madea’s Family Reunion Tyler Perry grows in one majorly important way. While already the writer, actor and producer, Perry now becomes director as well – his first film! Given Darren Grant’s workmanlike direction of Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Perry is a fine replacement. We lose only a little of Grant’s technical acumen, but it was unwanted. Though Family Reunion is one visually drab picture – even sans filterers, it’s one of the brownest movies I’ve ever seen, and I’m referring to the background here – it improves upon Diary in one important arena: the performances. Oh no, there’s nothing resembling subtlety, but stagebound Perry knows what he needs of his actors, to best serve the message, and he accomplishes it here. Whether you like the outcome, this movie is precisely what it ought to be.


Now…last time I compared Perry to Thomas Kinkade, and other purveyors of unintentional kitsch – the sort which is wholeheartedly embraced by artistically disinclined audiences. Perry the director sure doesn’t disappoint! When forced to present his ideas of visual beauty, he climaxes the movie (post-reunion) with a wedding of the utmost chintz! It’s meant to be a reflection of taste and goodness (because this is where Victoria and Frankie wed – and trade perfectly-written spur-of-the-moment vows)…so it’s all the more damning the wedding just reeks of Koonsian consumer false consciousness. Let’s see, we got live human angels dangling from the rafters playing their harps, we got an ersatz Eiffel Tower plopped on the altar for no reason except Paris is associated with romance, we got flashing lights everywhere.

As a visual, this sums up my impression of Tyler Perry movies. They are like artlessly positive Christmastime postcards. They employ a middlebrow sensibility thoroughly divorced from the notion of the artist as anything but a provider of pleasing comfort. This is my complaint, which has nothing to do with race or even niche audiences in general, but is all about a profound unadventurousness.


(Footnote: Oh, Madea is in this movie, and she’s in it throughout – it’s not just a cameo. And yet she’s obviously pretty tertiary. Basically, she functions no differently than in Diary of a Mad Black Woman, so there’s nothing more to add. It’s odd that she, the franchise element, is so minor thus far. And here we reach the inescapable truth: The Madea Simmons franchise is character-driven, not sequel-driven. Like a literary author recycling his favorite character in the background of otherwise-independent stories, Perry’s movies are all in a single universe, but aren’t necessarily of one continuity. Madea shall return as the unifying element, joining distinct movies.)


RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)
• No. 3 Meet the Browns (2008)
• No. 4 Madea Goes to Jail (2009)
• No. 5 I Can Do Bad All By Myself (2010)
• No. 6 Madea's Big Happy Family (2011)

Madea Simmons, No. 1 - Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)

Tyler Perry is quite a fascinating fellow. Born in New Orleans, he grew up under abusive conditions – from his father, at least. Perry’s mother instead exposed him to church, installing young Tyler with a conscience and decency. But at times this was hardly any salve for the molestation Perry otherwise endured. Without even completing high school, little suggested Perry might become one of the most powerful men in entertainment.

His turnaround came from the Queen of Entertainment Herself, Oprah Winfrey, whose televised discussion on the cathartic act of writing inspired Perry to take up writing himself – just after looking up “cathartic” in the dictionary. Using his own tortured past as inspiration, Perry started writing letters to himself, which became a musical, which led to community theater. Moving to Atlanta and joining the African-American community’s am-dram “chitlin circuit,” Perry produced his first play in 1998. That was “I Know I’ve Been Changed.”

Through the years perfecting his writing, with no formal training, Perry’s success came swiftly – though not immediately. But no one can argue with earning $100 million in live theater ticket sales, especially when theater (amateur, niche market theater at that) is sort of a lost medium. Well, Perry found a receptive audience in the region’s African-American community, open to his message of family and unconcerned with Perry’s artlessness. It’s in serving this underserved audience that Perry wrote twelve plays in basically as many years, doing well enough to get even Hollywood’s attention.

Many have criticized mainstream film for catering to an imagined white, male, middle-class audience [citation needed], and so Perry provides a counter example. Adapting his third play for his first film, Diary of a Mad Black Woman spoke to moviegoers who aren’t often catered to: urban, black, middle-aged, female. None of those descriptors applies to me. I have never kept a diary (I blog, which is much worse), I am rarely mad, and I am surely neither black nor a woman…I’m barely even an “of a.” So in critiquing Diary of a Mad Black Woman, certain qualitative statements may not be accurate.


I shall consider the overall plot, to ground us all, then get into dissection. Helen Simmons-McCarter (Set it Off’s Kimberly Elise) is the titular black woman, not yet mad, but rather happily wed for 18 years to Atlanta’s most ridiculously successful attorney, Charles McCarter (corroborated by Steve Harris’ attorney role on “The Practice”). Then one day, entirely out of the blue, Charles forces Helen out of his mansion and demands a divorce. Helen moves in with her long-estranged family, becomes self sufficient again, learns to overcome and forgive Charles, and enjoys a much more fulfilling romance with perfection incarnate, Orlando (“Soul Train” host Shemar Moore).

That’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman in its broadest stroke, which doesn’t suggest it’ll be anything more than your standard middling romance/drama, the likes of which my mom seems to prefer over the movie-referencing nonsense I support. (Hmm, maybe there is something to this underserved movie clientele which I, Average Moviegoer, cannot grok.) Certainly the movie as presented by Lions Gate fits that mold. Director Darren Grant (who otherwise seems wholly taken up with music videos) films events precisely as you’d imagine from that plot summary. Apart from a few crane-happy establishing shots, we get mostly mid-level close-ups, actors chatting in over-the-shoulder static debates. The greatest visual play comes in the innumerable romantic montages, where Grant grants us that sort of buttery dream filter not seen in film since the 1930s. So in a great many ways, Diary of a Mad Black Woman is as middlebrow and generic as movies get.


But then there’re the giant “ifs.” Most obviously, the entire cast is black (I shan’t say “African-American,” lest there’s some Canadians in here or something). Because movies are so often whitewashed, we then get this as the flipside, films inhabited 100% by specific other races. There’s something to specialization, though I lament that there’s enough of a schism for something like “black cinema” to even need a label, but whatever.

The all-black cast is an artifact of Tyler Perry’s involvement, as are all of the interesting elements. No surprise, since while he didn’t direct this film (having zero familiarity with this technical medium), Perry wrote it, produced it, and acts in it. In light of his secondary future career as a film director, it is easiest to cite Diary of a Mad Black Woman as Perry’s auteurist statement. Go back to your Jaheim videos, Grant.

Certainly Perry’s input informs Diary with a certain outsider art appeal, likely carried over from his stage plays. Grant’s flat staging thus is beneficial for not getting in the way. Of note, though in summary Diary sounds like a drama, in practice it’s a melodrama. And let’s just look at that summary again (where I now paraphrase my own paraphrasing):

“After 18 years of perfect wedded bliss…” Diary is formed upon extreme exaggerations, in every aspect. It’s not enough for our heroine Helen to leave a happy marriage…it must have been the most flawless matrimony known to man, at least in pure material terms. That includes Charles’ ridiculously opulent mansion, his cachet to do basically anything in Atlanta (his own personal fiefdom)…and his ability to wholly turn against Helen when the adulterous whim inexplicably tickles his fancy. With reference to a prenup, and Charles’ plot-convenient legal omnipotence, he ends two decades’ of marriage in under five minutes, most efficiently booting Helen out with but the clothes on her back, and a U-Haul full of more useless clothing.


In most narrative in any form, this sort of event would have some layers of complexity underneath it – say, exploring Helen’s marital blindness, her complete naiveté, something. Instead, in under 10 minutes, Perry has moved through all this as his set up. Charles is 100% an unreconstructed villain, cruel to the nth degree, and as superpowered in his own way as the Dark Lord Sauron (Helen legally is denied from getting a word in edgewise during conversation). This stuff is melodrama, it’s a soap opera, it’s Mary Worth, it’s the strongest possible emotions felt as fully as possible as often as possible.

There is surely some tonal inelegance at play in Diary…at least, by the traditional definitions of what makes a good narrative. It’s too simple, says a person used to finding depth. There is nothing to Diary beyond the surface, which is awkward when it decides to still have all those story niceties: a theme and subtext and a moral and all that. Under Perry’s hand, that stuff is stated outright. All we’re missing is a big flashing “THIS IS THE MORAL” sign (or Samuel L. Jackson popping up to announce “Message!”). For one thing, there’s Helen and her diary – and what a blunt device it is, allowing her character to do voice over monologues constantly, laying her emotional turmoil bare in the simplest terms. They say it’s a common sign of a first-time screenwriter to over-rely upon voice over, especially from the main character – though like any device, it can be used wisely (Apocalypse Now, Fight Club, Double Indemnity, Kind Hearts and Coronets, countless others). This isn’t one of those examples.

Here’s the danger as I see it with Diary of a Mad Black Woman: Roderick Rules: By most standards, it is not an especially good story (to say nothing of movie) because it employs cheap devices amateurishly. But it has been as hugely popular within the U.S.’s African-American community as Perry’s plays. (Perry’s work, I understand, has had NO distribution outside of the U.S., to show just how niche it is.) Oh, and Perry’s work is niche…and I ain’t in that niche. But find the right target, and they won’t care about obviousness in acting or script or direction. Our hypothetical middle-aged black woman (diary or madness optional) isn’t concerned with film as an art form. Her concerns, her life concerns, are more distinctly like Helen’s (only, you know, realistic), and so she judges the result in those terms.


For a movie with “Black” in the title, there is little here which speaks directly in racial terms. Instead, Perry’s eternal message is one of family and religion – those two most essential elements, so of course I’ve barely explored them. When people talk of “values,” they mean something like this. In her estranged new life, Helen finds a local gospel church. Indeed, once the movie’s over, she’ll have introduced newly-ex-husband Charles to the faith, for true resolution comes from peaceable solutions, not earthly victory. On its own, this is an uncontroversial message – and understand it’s a lot more agreeable if you go in already agreeing with these conclusions. (Preaching to the choir and all that…) They say Christians (or those of any faith) are underserved by commercial films, which try to avoid anything decisive. No doubt by allying himself with his strong professed faith, Perry fills a niche.

It’s just a shame it’s so damn hard to make quality entertainment when going limited like this. I think it’s a righteous task, but maybe impossible…I also think the most successful religious movies, as films, are usually a little more divisive, like Monty Python’s Life of Brian or The Last Temptation of the Christ. (Then there are cynical and abhorrent things like Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, which I won’t address further…) In its way, Diary of a Mad Black Woman is the cinematic equivalent of those cutesy cherubic figurines, or the paintings by Thomas Kinkade (an example, though prepare to vomit on your keyboard in aesthetic terror). “Kitsch” would not be an inappropriate word. Joyous and uncomplicated to the artistically disinclined, utterly without merit for the avante garde. Tyler Perry is the anti-Seventh Seal, even if crises of faith inform both. Tyler Perry reassures, he supports a preexisting temperament.


Oh that preexisting temperament…it makes Diary as beyond criticism as any fanboy-approved blockbuster, and like Transformers 2 those who “don’t get it” are shut out. This is a reductive argument, but let’s see how it plays out. This is where the racial element comes into play – culturally. Diary of a Mad Black Woman espouses the good elements of Southern black culture. So we don’t simply get “church” in some generic sense; we get pure Gospel, with its ecstatic “Mmm-hmms” and dancing and music. There’s plenty of soul, and a decided rejection of more recent hip-hop. With a love of the montage’s narrative shorthand, Diary at times is this close to becoming a full-blown musical. Hell, at least once its characters join together for a dance number…only this isn’t the sort of movie with enough stylization to justify such silliness.

Combined with its undercurrent of melodrama, that makes Diary pretty lumpy, tonally. It’s almost like a variety show. And that’s to say nothing of its other major form – as a comedy.

Here’s where the conversation about Tyler Perry truly starts, because it’s as a comedy where Diary of a Mad Black Woman boasts franchisable elements. Serving the comedy is Perry’s most famous creation…Mabel “Madea” Simmons.


Madea (Tyler Perry in a fat suit) is Helen’s grandmother, and the mater familias to the entire extended Simmons clan – whom we’ll meet more of over time, with Madea forever the master of ceremonies. Her role in Diary is peripheral at best. Actually, Madea and her brother Joe (Tyler Perry in a different fat suit) are just about the closet cinematic figures I can think of to being true comic relief. I’m thinking in the sense of Shakespeare’s gravediggers, laff-generating buffoons wedged artlessly into a heartfelt storyline. Madea’s style of enormously broad comic hijinks can occur on a dime. There is zero transition between dance numbers, moments of Helen weeping, and Madea running through an old minstrel routine. This is perhaps best highlighted by a late scene, where Helen listens to a lengthy discourse on forgiveness…and then Joe farts. That’s probably the most random and artless fart joke I’ve encountered in the wild, which is saying something!


Okay, so I used the word “minstrel” in summarizing Madea’s function. Oh, but that is loaded! Let’s hold onto that argument for now (maybe for a sequel), and simply examine Madea without qualifiers. She is outspoken, loud and given to regional idioms (“You hun’ry?” is one of her first lines), and she carries a gun. As per Wikipedia’s phonetic example, she’s prone to proclamations such as “Halleluyer praise da lort!” (They said it that way, not me!) For all of her wise-fool buffoonery, and run-ins with the law, at day’s end Madea dispenses with homespun wisdom to underline Perry’s point.

As played by Perry, Madea has all the actorly subtlety of a recurring “SNL” character. Her voice is nasally, but Perry does nothing to hide he’s simply a dude in a drag act. Actually, that fat suit is barely even there! As I understand it, this minimalist/amateurish makeup is exactly as you’d see Madea on the stage – so you can’t fault ‘em for not keeping true to the original. Madea is a patently artificial construct, at odds with the melo-seriousness of the Helen plot.

Madea is a Mammy. Yeah, I’m touching upon controversial elements. Hardly any of her humor is original, and barely funny to my white boy mentality – though I did laugh most heartily when she compares Charles to Ike Turner. Actually, what makes Madea presumably work for her intended audience is an element of familiarity. She’s an archetype, a grandmotherly figure familiar to many. Not to me, sadly! Forget rambunctious joy de vivre, my grandmothers were the ice queens! (Tyler Perry movies: For airing personal familial grievances.) Madea’s familiarity also comes from recycling old black forms of humor. There is an unabashed “yo mama so fat” routine in here, alongside similar outdated comic moments.

But if you’re not married to the idea of comedic evolution, of laughing at the new simply because it’s the new, I can see where the comfort comes in this. There’s perhaps a reason “comfort food” is popular amongst Madea types. And comedy is one of those tricky things, like horror, which is exceedingly subjective, and more so with culturally-dependent yuks. I’ve been the sole non-ethnic non-giggler at work-mandated screenings of Soul Plane (seriously), and a lot of that is because I’m very white. Like, I’m actually surprised my DVD player could even read Diary of a Black Woman.


I wish to return to the melodramatic soap opera at Diary’s center before taking my leave of it. It isn’t enough for Helen to free herself of Charles by finding family, church and work. She must also find love. Enter Orlando, the anti-Charles, the most perfect embodiment of the human ideal imaginable: He is attractive, loves his family, loves God, always says precisely the right thing (this detail is so extreme, Helen actually lampshades it), and is unequivocally dedicated to Helen without reserve. Orlando is a sort of Marty Stu wish fulfillment for Perry as a writer, and for his swooning middle-aged woman audiences just as much. This bland characterization is another example of Perry’s outsider origins; no trained writer creates blatant self-avatars like this. (Though credit to Perry for playing a third character – now minus a fat suit – a father and husband who seems a little more frail.) But just speaking as a guy, must these romantic movies always create such unrealistic Ken doll ideals?! Oh yes, I’m well aware of the female counterargument, so let’s just drop it all.

Sticking with the notion of Perry as an untrained novice somehow given access to the big leagues…The story is a simple case of divorce and romance. This does not demand complicated plotting. So when plot does artificially rear up, it’s most obvious. In order to make his point about Helen’s newfound forgiveness, Perry subjects Charles to that most convenient of plot maladies – complete paralysis. All courtesy of a deus ex machina criminal – yeah, it doesn’t even have anything to do with the story; it just happens. And in one court scene immediately following upon another court scene, which is damned awkward. Though Charles’ physical recovery is just as sudden – a church miracle, the sort of “Magical Healer Man” presentation of God that’s not worth critiquing. So between all this, and the initial conditions of Helen’s marriage, etc., there’s a whole lot we must accept from this story.

Not knowing the franchise’s wider course, I can’t say what’s indicative of Perry’s films to come. With Madea Simmons as the continued element, it’s likely we won’t see melodrama continue as it has. It’s likely we could go into a complete Big Momma’s House sort of realm. Or with Perry staying on as the creative engine, things could remain in this particular soul-funk – for if you’re rewarded for committing some very specific narrative sins, why change ‘em?


RELATED POSTS:
• No. 2 Madea's Family Reunion (2006)
• No. 3 Meet the Browns (2008)
• No. 4 Madea Goes to Jail (2009)
• No. 5 I Can Do Bad All By Myself (2010)
• No. 6 Madea's Big Happy Family (2011)