User reviews

I guess I should start off by admitting that I've never seen any of the previous Madea films, and that I went into this movie knowing nothing about it except that it's the latest in a long line of similar films which have gotten about the same public response as your average Steven Seagal movie. And that's not good, in case you're wondering. That's okay though, because during the opening credits we see various headlines zooming across the screen, like "Super-Sized Stripper Smacks Spectator," and we get the general idea. Madea has always been a problem for the police, she has a rap sheet a mile long and doesn't feel any need to change her behavior.

The movie comes dangerously close to being another one of those intolerable comedies where Eddie Murphy or Martin Lawrence star as every character in the movie. Madea's family are clearly meant to resemble the Klumps, although I would be lying if I said that they were not entertaining. Uncle Joe in particular is a goofy caricature, but he's a hilarious one.

The problem with the movie is that it tries to be two very different kinds of films, and it succeeds in being those two kinds of films, but the combination of the two styles kills this one completely. Half the movie is a light-hearted comedy in the vein of the Nutty Professors and Big Momma's House, but the other half of the film is a very serious drama that deals effectively with very serious issues. Life Is Beautiful is the only movie I've ever seen that really succeeds brilliantly at this story-telling technique, but that movie worked because it tied the two genres together. Life also comes close. This one, on the other hand, just throws the two halves in the same room and then sits back while they sit there not working.

Dr. Phil makes a surprisingly hilarious cameo as a therapist that tries in vain to get Madae to admit that she has an anger management problem, which ultimately lands her in jail. Meanwhile, Josh Hardaway, the Assistant District Attorney, is experiencing a wonderfully developing career, until he meets Candace, a childhood friend who has fallen into a desperate situation after years of drugs and prostitution. He tries as hard as he can to help her despite the hysterical and ridiculous whining of his horrid fiancé.

This is one of the worst parts of the movie, by the way. There is nothing worse than a romantic comedy that pits two suitors (male or female) against each other for the love of the main character, when one of the suitors is clearly tailor made to be the right choice and the other is an intolerable jerk-off. See 27 Dresses and you'll know what I mean. Josh's fiancé in this movie is unfortunately such a nagging, conniving wench that it's impossible to have any feelings towards her other than animosity. This is not a good start for a movie whose story is driven by the characters. Almost from the moment she enters the movie I was just waiting for Josh to come to his senses and boot her to the curb where she belongs.

The issues of prostitution and drugs and drugs are taken very seriously, there's even a pretty intensely emotional scene involving one of the key male characters, who breaks down completely under the weight of a tragic event for which he has never been able to forgive himself. The acting is superb in this scene, but it is genuinely bizarre when Madea shows up again and we realize what the rest of the movie is like.

It's impossible to tell if this is supposed to be a comedy or a drama, because both elements are done fairly well but they simply don't work when put together. I don't need my movies to be categorized, in fact I am pleasantly surprised when films cleverly bend genres, but this one gives us one character with a truly frightening history of drugs and prostitution and another character who lifts a car up on giant forklifts and then drops it 30 feet onto the pavement when a callous owner steals her spot at K-Mart.

Ultimately Madea and Candace get locked up in the same prison, and the two stories attempt in vain to come together. I won't say that all of the character are utterly uninteresting, although there are several points where a stupendous lack of screen writing ability is made abundantly clear. Consider this exchange between Candace and her new cell-mate, who happens to be one of her old, close friends –

Candace: "You look good." Cellmate: "Yeah, I'm doin' good. How you doin'?"

Are you serious? I'm doin' good? How you doin'? Is this an inside joke? You're both in prison! Who says they're doin' good or asks someone else how they're doin' when both of them are in prison?

But maybe I'm nitpicking. There are moments of fun in the movie, there are a few laugh out loud moments, and there are some moments of pretty impressive acting, but the movie as a whole, unfortunately, adds up to something much, much less than the sum of its parts.

Tyler Perry has really outdone himself this time, making the deep artistic statement "I'm black, and I have a fatsuit." Sure, this statement has been made before by Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, and others, but Perry adds a certain panache to the blackness and the fat suit that makes this more than just a movie about a black guy in a fat suit: it is THE movie about a black guy in a fat suit.

There may be other movies out there which you are tempted to see: "Slumdog Millionaire" may have won several acadmey awards, but where's the black guy in the fatsuit? How is that a movie? Tyler Perry continues to push the boundaries of artistic excellence with drag AND a fat suit, and we can only hope some day he decides to throw bad accents and white face into the mix.

This narrative can't make it's mind up. The director (who also writes it) gets confused between whether he has written a comedy, or a melodrama.

The scenes containing what we believe to be the main protagonist 'Madea' are an attempt at comedy that rely on spectacle and stereotype. The gags aren't executed very well at all (yet you can't blame the actors and actresses with this script) and I get the feeling that this has all been done before, recently in fact and better I might add.

Scenes containing Candi are melodramatic and actually not that bad. There is some good acting and the plot is well contrived. Some of these scenes question American class division and have a purpose.

So, bring these two elements together and you get a confused audience. The two stories have no relevance to each other until the end of the film when they 'collide'. I use collide loosely because this doesn't even happen. The characters meet and nothing much happens. I think they spoke together in about three shots.

The story itself lets the director down as well. It's easy to second guess (yet you wish you'd be proved wrong) and you wonder whether you are watching two different movies playing at once. The character of Madea is badly constructed. There is no development what-so-ever. Without giving too much away; Madea's involvement in the ending is complete nonsense. People who have seen this film will probably agree that she has no real reason to be there.

To sum up, this is the worst film I have seen in years. The director should have picked one of the stories instead of merging them in some sort of Nutty Professor meets Pretty Woman side show. Utterly ridiculous.

I found this movie to be lacking severely in plot structure and and in character development. There are many times when the director's attempts to be funny overshadow any chance there may be for character growth. A lot of the acting was wooden and there were many clichés thrown in there that the director was hoping no one would catch onto. The ending was especially horrendous as it appears the director could not come up with anything else so just made something up.

There were two highlights: Viola Davis' role in the film and when the lights came on in the theater and we were allowed to leave. Other than that I wouldn't want to see it again.

I'll keep this short and sweet. It's not Avatar, and it wasn't over produced! It's funny and has a great plot. Here is some advice, get a sense of humor. Not every movie has to be 10/10 to be good. Giving a movie like this anything less than a "5/10!" Is absurd! Quit getting mad just because this movie promotes religion and happiness. Go watch a really Hollywood movie and hop on their bandwagon! This is a real movie, from real people, from real life! These characters take me back to my childhood. Hard times and hard struggles and how in the end, God works things out! I bet half of you people reviewing this movie just hate the religious message! That's all!

I'm really not sure why this film is getting such a bad rep. on IMDb, but the general public LOVED this one. What a winner! The two different plots in the this film were brilliant! This way, the movie had a little bit of everything. The whole time I was on the edge of my seat. I wouldn't say the two different stories "meshed" well, but there was a great moral to be learned. My favorite thing about this movie, and all of Tyler Perry's films, is the wonderful "feel good" mood they leave you in. His productions can always brighten the day. Enough said, this movie was more than satisfactory. Some people are clearly just too hard to please.

I scratched my head through most of this movie and remain quite bewildered by it now that I've seen the whole thing. What's with the title? Madea (one of those man playing a woman characters) is really only about half of the movie, the half that deals with Madea is silly at best and irritating at worst, and she only goes to jail for about the last 20 minutes. So what's with "Madea Goes To Jail" as if that's the focal point of the story?

The real meat of the story revolves around the relationship between Joshua (Derek Luke) and Candi (Keshia Knight Pulliam.) Joshua is a DA who rose from the wrong side of the tracks and is now engaged to Linda (Ion Overman) - another DA and something of a "princess" - as she's repeatedly called. Candi, meanwhile, is a prostitute who grew up with Joshua and who reconnects with him. Joshua has a need to help her out of her situation. Something happened between the two years ago that makes Joshua feel responsible for Candi, but it takes a while for that to come out. This story is the "meat" of the movie, far more central than the Madea storyline, and not really related to it in any meaningful way. The Candi story is a heavy one: prostitution, drugs, jail, rape. For a comedy this is actually pretty dark most of the way through. Madea, I guess, is supposed to provide the comedy, but aside from a handful of scenes doesn't really accomplish that. There's a bizarre focus on religion throughout this, highlighted by a decent enough turn by Viola Davis as an unorthodox minister reaching out to the local streetwalkers. Even Dr. Phil appears in this. The exchange between him and Madea was cute for a while, but got tired very fast, and why it was deemed necessary to have yet another portrayal of a Madea/Dr. Phil session run during the closing credits is one of those mysteries no one will ever be able to explain.

If this had just focused on the Joshua/Candi story it would have made for some pretty good material and a pretty powerful movie. Unfortunately, the nonsense surrounding the Madea material drags everything else about this movie down. This is basically a poorly put together and overall unappealing movie. (3/10)

"Madea Goes to Jail" stands out in most of the movies I've seen, for one reason only: It was one of the two movies I've ever walked out on in the theater.

I admit it, I only laughed a couple times...but for the most part ,the humor consisted of nothing but shallow, harshly stereotypical and unclassy "jokes". Tyler Perry's portrayal of African-Americans is almost insulting. Not only that, but Madea was only shown for less than half of it! The only thing saving this from a 1 is Keisha Knight Pulliam's performance. She was the ONLY interesting thing about this crap fest. I look forward to more from her, but please, Tyler Perry, no more.

Now, before anything, I'm a Christian and I do have some religious beliefs. However, I'm not a hardcore Christian. I also can't stand it when people shove religious crap down my throat. I can learn to poke fun at my own religion and laugh because for all I know I could be worshiping the wrong religion. Not a big deal to me. I'm still a decent guy. Religion is always the last thing on my mind.

With that said, this movie was just bad in every way possible. Let me break it down for you: it's not funny, it's not clever, it's not entertaining, it's overlong, it's boring, it's predictable, it's clichéd, the bad acting and dialog make it unwatchable at times with it's stupid one liners. It also tries too hard to be both dramatic and ends up becoming unbearably hammy. It also leaves me wondering: "Is it comedy or drama? Do I even care anymore because of how unlikeable the characters are?" I've seen some comedy/dramas that evenly weigh out each element very well. This film and the rest of Tyler Perry's films don't fit into that category at all.

This also pounds you over the head with religious context and other ridiculous and unrealistic plot elements that just come off as being unintentionally sappy. And why the hell is Dr. Phil in this? Really? Does anyone like this douche bag enough to want him to star in a film (however amateurish)? And not having one pop-culture icon in the film is enough, but they also had to add in another one (Judge Mathis).

Oh, I forgot to tell you the story. Madea goes to jail, but it takes forever before she actually gets there (she's there for the final 20 minutes of the show). Tyler Perry casts his conceded ass into three separate roles in this, which gets tiresome. I have no problem with directors wanting to be in their own films (Braveheart and Annie Hall come to mind) but, damn dude, three roles? Seriously? Oh, yeah, back to the "story". Madea keeps doing dumb stuff so she eventually goes to jail and is ordered anger management (with Dr. Phil of all people) and at the same time a prostitute is trying to get off the streets.

Is there anything in this film that Tyler Perry hasn't done before? Madea? Sexual abuse? Religious elements? Drug addiction? Yes, yes, it's all so sad and so easy for you to get tears jerked from your audience while at the same time giving them a good belly laugh. You are oh-so-clever, Tyler Perry.

All in all, I'm just getting really sick and tired of these stupid Madea movies. Almost as much as those damn "movie" movies with Seltzerberg. The only saving grace in this that I can think of is that the actor who plays Josh is the only one who didn't annoy me. He wasn't good, he just seemed like the only one who was even trying. Kudos to him, but at the same time he should be ashamed to agree to star in a film like this. The man is clearly talented and needs to be in real movies and avoid this kind of crap. He's the only reason why this doesn't get one star out of me. I gave it two for his sake.

Like I said with Not Easily Broken, leave the religious elements out of your films unless it actually does have something to do with it (Last Temptation of Christ, Doubt) but at the same time don't exclude your audience. Next time, Perry, I'm not gonna be so easy on your ass.

OK...check it out people. I've seen the movie. It's not a dog. In fact, it was a quite enjoyable FAMILY movie with heart and humor. Why, as of this review, is it rated a 2.8, while predigested, thoughtless, poop like Friday the 13th PART 12 is rated 6.3? I think I've found the culprit and it is us. I don't know whether or not to chalk it up to ignorance or racism or both, but had I relied on the IMDb viewer's average rating for this movie, my family and I would have missed out on a good movie! Wake up! I've read the comments...why is this movie rated so low? I can tell you why I gave it 7/10 stars... it was funny, it had heart, it was entertaining, and oh by the way, had a message. What did you not like? The message? Forgiveness begins with ourselves? I really don't get it. Don't get me wrong...far from Oscar worthy (although I thought the acting was VERY solid, especially from Keshia Knight Pulliam (Rudy from The Cosby Show) and Derek Luke (the assistant DA). I'm really baffled why the typical reviewer here has failed to see the true value of this entertaining, heartwarming gem of a movie. It's further evidence to me that the average American moviegoer is borderline moronic. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the fact that this movie is not being recognized for the entertaining, positive movie it is, demonstrates to me that American values and what it considers enjoyable and entertaining, are very twisted. I prescribe really trying to watch the movie next time around instead of diddling your girlfriend or stuffing your face with popcorn...give it another chance. You might not like it...but 2.8? Come on!

I loved this movie. I have watched several other movies of Tyler Perry, and they have all been great comedy. This one was a little different with a little bit different twist, and for one of the many (hopefully), I got the meaning of the movie. Granted, it was hilarious to the point that I was laughing out loud. However, the melodrama was happy medium. This movie is just like real life if you look at it from that prospective. Laugh should be and for some really is a lot of funniness, but the reality is that "Life" happens and you will have much more melodrama than you will laughter. For Tyler Perry and this movie, he just simply swapped it around and involved more laughter than melodrama. The unlikelihood that you will learn a true lesson about life in this movie; you must really be intuned into the movie in order to get it. I took away from the movie this: "Life will be a mixture of both laughter and pain. However just like the movie said, you only have one life and it is only up to us individually how we spend it. As far as Forgiveness, it takes a strong person to forgive themselves for their own faults and mistakes and to start fresh in life no matter their age or gender. The laughter helps you remember the happy moments in your own life, and the melodrama helps you remember that the melodrama, although not easy to deal with, is necessary to learn anything out of what happens in our lives by the choices whether simply or huge that we individually make." For the record, I am not a professional writer. I am a single Mother of three who has seen the good and more so the bad in Life and choose not to let the bad rule my life. How about you?

as i see it, the main problem here has to do with the title itself ; not appropriate since the ACTUAL(and otherwise excellent) plot has not much to do with "Mandea"...i can only assume that Tyler wanted to kill two birds with one stone = the movie is targeting the wrong audience ( the one looking for cheap forgettable laughs that is). therefore i can somehow understand the low ratings for this particular feature even if i do not agree.

getting past that, the plot involving the prostitute and the lawyers is just as good if not better then the other social oriented movies Tyler has made for the REAL "working class". keeps true to realism and "good people" morale theme. it has nothing to do with organized religion as some reviewers have implied before me, but rather with having FAITH, a term that is universal just differently interpreted by each of us. the are some VERY sensible scenes and realistic dialogues

acting in itself is good to very good except for...Tyler.he should give up acting he is quiet BAD at that, and should refrain himself to be a great director as he always has...it is good that he does not take too much screening time himself...Keshia Knight Pulliam would be the best actor here as well as Derek Luke and Viola Davis.

for mandea plot i a give 5 rating and for the alternative one a full 10, therefore we come to 7-8.reccomended for mature audiences looking for realism in America; this movie also exposes very well the hypocrisies affecting all social classes.

Worst piece of garbage on the screen for the decade. A pathetically idiotic plot, miserable production values.....makes one wonder who underwrote this piece of trash. Bad bad bad bad bad bad. Why anyone would bother putting this on film or tape is beyond me. Not funny, not interesting. Let's put it this way - this Tyler dude ain't Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor or Red Fox. For that matter, he could not even shine their shoes. Then comes the idiotic plot - sorry script, poor direction, lousy acting, even worst "singing"....so...excuse me while I puke. In my many years of movie watching, this rates right on the very bottom. Glad I did not pay money to see this piece of trash - one other good thing about Netflix. Just yank the DVD out of the player, put it back in the envelope and ship it back. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. Very baaaaaaaad.

Nobody has to expect for the movie to be better than the play. This one wasn't better than the play, but it was still great. Two stories in one, make this movie a hit. A man tries to help a prostitute go through the right path, meanwhile Madea makes her crazy moves that land her in jail. The movie was most drama, due to the long story of Candy. But when you see Madea, all you can expect is a good laughter that will leave you breathless. I expected more Madea, and I found the movie a little short, but the reason is because we get accustomed to the plays which last longer. But Tyler Perry does another masterpiece that is a must see for the whole family.

The play had me laughing up a storm. This film had laughs far and few in between. I saw a lot of potential with MADEA in JAIL but it never panned out! Maybe TYLER is putting them out too fast because this could have been funny in the parts that were supposed to be funny. But it seems like every time I was about to set my self up for hilarity, the payoff wasn't funny. Nice to see KEISHA given a chance to shine. This may be Tylers most successful, but it is not as good as Diary or Why Did I Get Married.

Tyler says he wants DIANA ROSS, Ben Kingsley, Kimberly Elise and CICELY Tyson for a movie that would be a total departure from this type of typical formula. Hope this works to have the magnificent DIANA ROSS back on screen clashing with the devastating CICELY TYSON would be film history worth watching. They both were nominated for an Oscar at the same time back in the early 70s.

Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail is one of his messiest films yet, but this time, I think I can form an explanation as to why it seems like two mediocre films were sandwiched together here to effectively create one bad film. The film came out in 2009, only four years after Perry made his theatrical debut with Diary of a Mad Black Woman, another aggressively mediocre and uneven film. During this time, if Perry wasn't writing unique stories for his theatrical efforts, he was updating his plays to fit the theatrical standards for their film counterparts. Madea Goes to Jail was one the first play written after his entry into theatrical films that was later adapted for a play soon after. The writing process for the play, and more-so the film, had to have gone a lot quicker, as Perry needed to create a story for the stage, begin directing and selling it, while writing the story for the screen, and directing and finalizing it. Alas, we end up with a theatrical effort of Perry's that's horribly uneven and jarringly bad even when its individual prospects are examined.

The film revolves, yet again, follows Tyler Perry's cross-dressing alter-ego Madea Simmons, who is arrested for her latest police spectacle, which involved a high-speed chase down the freeway. Being that the officers, fearing for their lives and amidst being beaten, didn't read Madea her Miranda rights, the judge cannot lock her up, but instead, sends her to an anger management course with Dr. Phil McGraw. With the help of her daughter Cora (Tamela Mann) and her pot-smoking brother Joe (Tyler Perry), Madea tries to get through anger management in the most insubordinate way possible.

Meanwhile, on an almost entirely unrelated note, we follow a district attorney named Joshua (Derek Luke), who is leading a successful career for himself, along with his fiancée Linda (Ion Overman), another attorney. One day, however, a woman named Candace "Candy" Washington (Keshia Knight Pulliam), an old friend of Joshua's, reenters his life. Candy is now a drug-addicted prostitute, living on the streets, victim to savage pimps and horny clients with no place to stay or sleep. Joshua's act of kindness in allowing Candy to stay at his and Linda's home angers Linda, who sees Candy as nothing more than street trash who must live in her ill-made bed because of the bad choices she's made.

Perry intersects these stories with so little cohesion it's almost like flipping channels between Tommy Boy and the darker scenes of Showgirls. I have no knowledge how the play compared to this, but it would appear that in addition to wanting to make a film about Madea going to prison and experiencing life behind bars, Perry also wanted to make a film about a soon-to-be-married couple's opportunity at redeeming another soul and finding disagreements amongst themselves and each others methods. Both, like most ideas, could've amounted to good individual films, but as soon as these ideas were combined, there was little to no hope of them being good.

Perry's unevenness as a filmmaker, and his frequent dramatic ineptitude, is part of the reason why his filmography is so inconsistent. However, on some cases, he's managed to mask his burden of having too many subplots, characters, and ideas by way of offering insights on marriage and life in general, such as in Daddy's Little Girls and Madea's Big Happy Family. However, Madea Goes to Jail shows is tendencies exhibited in the worst possible way, not only combining two wholly unrelated stories that don't even intersect in any way save for one small, momentary instance, but even gives his beloved matriarch so little to work with here. Madea, who has found her way to be occasionally funny, is almost uniformly dull here, with throwaway one-liners and forgettable comedic positioning that doesn't allow for her true comic prose to shine through. Not only does Perry mistreat the film's structure, but he shortchanges his greatest film asset as well.

Madea Goes to Jail is so cloyingly disjointed and uninteresting that one can't help but question whether or not Perry even takes his audience seriously, giving them something like this. Perry has been a filmmaker that surprises me just as much as he disappoints me, but when films like this become the norm, when does the lack of seriousness and respect see itself turned from the filmmaker to the audience into a lack of seriousness and respect from the audience to the filmmaker?

Starring: Tyler Perry, Tamela Mann, Derek Luke, Ion Overman, and Keshia Knight Pulliam. Directed by: Tyler Perry.

Has the African American family become Ernest? I am ashamed at how Tyler Perry uses loaded stereotypes with weak stories to continue to produce the same content with different names.

The story seemed weak with poor acting and overall had be more frustrated at how an unintelligent viewer would look at this movie and say this is how I need to live or act. The problem with the culture in relation to the art is that you will influence the people in a way that they don't understand. While I always try to keep a positive view of anything someone takes the time to create this movie just misses the mark. His jokes are awful and the way he tried to combine stories to keep someones attention was a complete disaster. The worst part about this and many of his films is that other African Americans are paying him to watch themselves get made into people they are not. This is just low brown entertainment that is not worth wasting your time on!