Madea's Family Reunion
Note this review covers Diary of a Mad Black Woman as well
One blaspheme review: Jesus Christ
I my girlfriend has this thing about black men dressing up as women. I don't pretend to understand it. Luckily for her, this seems to be a surprisingly large genre of film. Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy, The Wayne's Brothers, and, of course, Tyler Perry.
The "Madea" movies are interesting for various reasons. The two parts that I find most surprising are the ridiculously heavy handed religious messages and truly awkward film making. I've seen both Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea's Family Reunion. Both follow a very similar, almost cookie cutter, plot line. As such, I'm only going to write one review, as I feel it will adequately describe both films.
Plot Summary:
- Good, albeit weak willed, woman with very bad male partner. It is hard to overstate how awful these men are. Physically and emotionally abusive, pretty much the worst of the worst. Woman is with them for a material reason, they are rich and "successful".
- The woman escapes/is thrown out and ends up living with Madea, who is strong, confident and little bit crazy.
- The woman meets a good, Christan, blue collar man. A man who wants to be with her and wants to wait until after they are married.
- Madea teaches woman to be strong and take revenge on the bad man.
- Woman has chance to stand up for herself, takes it, escaping from the bad man and being able to be with the good man.
Now, I'm a mutt from Canada, so I'm pretty far from the culture portrayed here. However, the overtness and almost fantasy level of Christan-ness found in these films (particularly with the "good" men) was quite surprising. Diary has a much stronger overall Christan message of redemption, whereas Family Re-union focuses more on the family/community angle. I don't mean to say there is anything inherently wrong with either of these messages, however they are both delivered like a punch in the face by Mike Tyson (Mike Tyson back in the day, of course).
In Diary a day at church manages to convert the bad bad, who has recently been tortured by the "good" woman. It also manages to save the heroin junkie and turn her into a choir singing angel. In Family Re-Union, the matriarch's of the family, played by none other than Maya Angelou and Cicely Tyson, walk around the re-union, looking disapprovingly at the youngsters behavior, some of the men are gambling, some of the women are dressed provocatively, and then they give a speech to the "re-union" (aka, the audience) about how they should be acting and how the should be dressing. I have no problem with a movie trying to convey these messages, I just can't stand how blatantly they are delivered.
In the end, I find these movies interesting, but more as a weird cultural statement than as a piece of entertainment.