As Testemunhas de Madea

After reading the other user reviews here on IMDb, I had low expectations walking into the theater today.... Did we watch the same movie?!

The movie starts out slow and beats a few jokes to death with excessive sarcasm and a convoluted concocted storyline. Definitely a film directed towards a non-white audience; it busted on all the white stereotypes, particularly the 'greedy wall street banker' and 'obliviously ignorant racist' ones. In a theater of 75 people, I was the only white person - awesome! I have no problem laughing at myself and knew it was going to be a fun movie with an interactive audience - and I was not disappointed :-)

With the previous Madea movies, the story tends to be more of a romance/drama, with Madea thrown in for some comic relief and wisdom. I was pleased to see that this was intended to be a straight-up comedy. Some parts of the movie flow more smoothly than others, the jokes are nothing new, and the story line is nothing ground-breaking, but it succeeds in pulling off a lot of slapstick humor... ultimately a raucous comedy that the crowd was hooting, hollering and giving hearty laughter. Like most things in NYC, the people are half the fun - being the only whitey in the room made it all the more authentic :-)

If you're looking for a thought-provoking, nuanced, 'fresh' movie, this isn't it. If you're looking for some good laughs and 2 hours of entertainment, come and see it!

Stay for the outtakes at the end credits - they are some of the funniest scenes :-)

I sat down in 2021 to watch the 2012 movie "Madea's Witness Protection". Now, I was vaguely familiar with the Madea movies in general, having seen a single one I think, so I wasn't really completely sure what I was getting into here.

However, I will say that writer and director Tyler Perry did manage to produce a script, storyline and movie that was fun enough for what it turned out to be. "Madea's Witness Protection" is the type of movie that you will watch once, and probably never again, as the contents of the storyline just didn't strike me as it was having enough to it to support more than a single viewing.

I suppose it takes a certain kind of humor to fully get into a movie such as "Madea's Witness Protection". But for me personally, there was only so much of a man pretending to be a woman that could be seen before it started to grow stale. I mean, it has been done and seen before in movies such as the 2007 movie "Norbit" or the numerous "Big Momma's House", and others. So it wasn't as if Tyler Perry was inventing anything grand here with this 2012 movie.

The movie definitely is carried by a rather impressive cast list, with the likes of Tyler Perry, Eugene Levy, Denise Richards, Tom Arnold, Doris Roberts and John Amos on the billing.

There was a fair amount of comedy throughout the course of the movie, and that definitely helped to keep the movie afloat a great long way.

I was adequately entertained by "Madea's Witness Protection", but this was hardly an outstanding gem in the comedy genre. Nor is it a movie that I think I will ever be returning to watch a second time.

My rating of "Madea's Witness Protection" lands on a five out of ten stars.

I'm a fan of Tyler Perry however I believe that he misses the opportunity to make a good movie great. In "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" and "Family Reunion" (both good movies - I'd give them a 7 out of 10) there was an interesting sub-plot combined with humor. There was just enough drama to keep them interesting and enough humor to make them very funny. I really enjoyed Madea's character.

Since then, the focus is mostly on ridiculous humor. This includes "Witness Protection". It appears that Tyler Perry can no longer decide who he wants the character of Madea to be.Is she a woman that has made mistakes in her past, realizes it, and helps others? Well, not exactly. Instead, I'm left feeling that the character would still be pole dancing if she wasn't so fat. Additionally, the character references smoking pot as though it's acceptable and just what she, and others do. I'm disappointed in Tyler Perry.

This is an OK movie with a solid foundation on which to build. Unfortunately, the construction is weak.

It's of course OK for a comedy to have a very simplistic story in it but its unforgivable when you just don't have a good comedy writer. Really, what's the point of watching a comedy when it just isn't being all that funny?

I just couldn't believe how badly written some of the comedy in this movie was. Most of the moments or pieces of dialog will get absolutely no laughs out of you, no matter how desperate the movie gets at times. The movie truly goes overboard in an attempt to still make you laugh, or at other times it's simply just going on and on. The director just didn't knew when to say cut at times, probably also because the director, Tyler Perry, himself is being on the screen a lot as well, as a whole bunch of different characters. But he clearly just ain't no Eddie Murphy!

The different story lines are either poorly connected or just connected in such an unrealistic way that it becomes ridicules. The movie even drops some story lines after a while and then picks them up again 30 minutes later, or sometimes it doesn't at all. It does the same with some of its characters. It all lets this movie feel like a real messy one at times and you are wondering multiple times throughout it what it exactly is that you are watching here.

The main premise of the movie is already a real ridicules and unlikely one to begin with. But the sad thing about it is that it's also absolutely going nowhere with it. At times I though that the movie was perhaps going to be one with some 'messages' it and the two different families would start to learn from each other and slowly but steadily grow closer to each other as well. But none of that is the case in this movie. It just mostly relies on racial stereotypes and other prejudices that just aren't being all that clever or original to watch and therefore also not all that funny.

And really, I love Eugene Levy but I just think he is better when he's not playing the lead role. He's just far better and more fun to watch in supporting roles, though it perhaps is not fair to say that purely based on his role in this movie of course. He is given some incredibly weak material to work with and the movie perhaps was at times relying far too much on his delivery. But not even a comical talent like Levy could turn some of the moments and pieces of dialog into something funny. And how are we supposed to believe he's married to Denise Richards? There is some weird casting going on in this movie but Tyler Perry foremost should not had cast himself playing 3 different characters. He just isn't a talented enough comic, so far too scenes involving him fall totally flat.

A failed attempt at a comedy.

4/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

I went and saw this last night with family and friends and really enjoyed myself. Yes, I can hear everyone moaning about "Its the same crap over and over again", which I agree is kinda true, and honestly, if you don't like the Madea movies, you might not like this one either, even though I do think this was one of the better ones (never did like "Madea goes to Jail").

Yes, Medea can get pretty tiring, after all, how many times can you see a 6ft+ man in drag? I know I had gotten tired of it pretty fast with "Big Momma's House". But there is just something about Madea that screams "homicidal maniac" and its hilarious watching "her" trying to stop from bitch slapping these people. As for the movie itself, some of the dialogue was a bit infantile and some of the acting a bit over the top (and under in some cases), but I came to watch a funny movie and not an intellectual one, so I let those slide.

As for Tyler Perry, I love most of his movies. See, I didn't saw I loved them all, cause I do agree that a lot of his story lines are becoming very similar and almost one-dimensional (although I did enjoy the last one "Good Deeds" very much).

Keep rocking Tyler!!