A Madea Christmas

I've seen some Medea movies but this was the first time I've watched one in a movie theatre. I watched it with my movie theatre-working friend but since he was on call for a possible shift today, we saw it at a cinema for a competitor which meant we both paid admission. Anyway, there was plenty of laughter from the audience including my friend but I, myself, only chuckled during Medea's attempts at his department store job but by the time the scene changed to Alabama and the arrival of Larry the Cable Guy, I laughed plenty especially whenever he had dialogue with the Tyler Perry woman character! There's the putting-in-lessons about racism, a corporation's attempt to put "Christ" out of Christmas, and bullying to stew the pot to contrived effect though because it's meant to go down easy for about 90 minutes, one probably won't get too offended. Anyway, Tyler Perry's A Medea Christmas is indeed pretty entertaining especially if you watched TV during the '80s and liked recognizing Lisa "Blair Warner" Whelchel from "The Facts of Life" or Anna Maria "Thelma Frye" Horsford from "Amen" while viewing this...

The mother and the daughter make this movie almost unwatchable! The daughter not telling the mom about her relationship when she had countless times and her mother being SO annoying that you want to smack her! It's absolutely ridiculous! Madea is literally the only saving grace of this movie!

It's probably one of the funniest Madea movies, but there are literally scenes completely out of order and one scene even REPEATS. Don't know who edited but man did they drop the ball on it.

Let me first say that I am a fan of the man Tyler Perry. His struggles, his perseverance, his rise to fame are inspirational to me and to so many others. He has had a hand full of good movies: A Diary of Mad Black Woman, The Family that Preys and the first Why Did We Get Married. Then, he has several movies that have a character and/or a scene and/or a particular actor/actress I like in them. I usually enjoy these movies and could see them again. Then there are the truly awful movies like the second Why Did We Get Married.

Madea's Christmas is in the second group. I enjoyed this movie more than I expected to. There were some opportunities to laugh out loud. The cast was fine especially Anna Marie Horsford and Larry the Cable Guy. There were the poignant moments and once I actually had a tear trying to pop up in one eye. Seeing Blair from the Facts of Life was nice.

If you are expecting an Oscar worthy movie, you will get your feelings hurt. If you want a movie you can enjoy with your family (they could have edited out the use of a particular curse word), you will be okay.

So basically, A Madea Christmas was nothing more than a Hallmark movie with a higher production value. This was the first Tyler Perry movie I've seen, and I'm pretty sure this will be my last.

The improv scenes including Larry the Cable Guy is this films only saving grace. Other than that, it's a very mundane movie with a weak character arc and and lazy story telling.

I truly believe that Mr Perry used the writers from The Hallmark Channel and asked them to write a generic, by the numbers script and have himself and Larry improvise scenes that add nothing to the story. It just seemed lazy to me.