Metacritic reviews

Madea's a riot, but what makes this richer, more textured follow-up to "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" so fascinating is the way Perry - a first-time director adapting his own hit play - shifts on a dime from a silly fart joke scene to one of intense, Sirkian melodrama.

Too long and its tone is disconcertingly uneven, but Perry never betrays or condescends to his characters.

Perry makes sure villains get their comeuppance, while heroines get big, frilly weddings - with God, and an imperious Maya Angelou - presiding over it all.

Tyler Perry offers another blithely unbalanced mix of low comedy, sudsy sentiment and spiritual uplift in Madea's Family Reunion.

Both Ms. Angelou and Ms. Tyson deliver powerful, touching messages. Just as they're sinking in, the film turns into an unabashed chick flick with a painfully gaudy wedding that includes live angels hanging on wires from the ceiling.

Perry is a playwright, and his dialogue here is usually entertaining.

Neither good nor so-bad-it's-good, Perry's odd oeuvre has an allure all its own.

Reunion is an awkward compound of paradoxical tones and ideas... But one shouldn't underestimate Perry's ability to make such contradictions work and get away with the most wretched excess.

Too bad the story is so predictable and the big wedding scene, in which women dressed as angels dangle from the church ceiling strumming harps, is cornier than an Orville Redenbacher factory.

What ends up on screen is confused storytelling that tries to solve too many social and family problems, sends mixed messages and, even worse, makes you laugh during parts when it's trying to be dead serious.