Their every interaction boils down either to one laughing hysterically at the other's joke or both of them agreeing with each other's folksy platitudes. None of that negative energy hinders this particular union, however. I mean, she has friends, but she treats them all like shit. We've never really seen Madea have a friend before. Perhaps A Madea Christmas' greatest contribution to the Tyler Perry canon is the bromance that blossoms between Madea and Larry the Cable Guy. This is important to me because I always long for Tyler Perry characters to communicate on this level, and this is the first film where they actually do. A Madea Christmas not only concentrates this very specific strength, but the film lets characters actually bond and become friends over their shared understanding of Eileen's insanity. He sets up hateful figures and we enjoy watching them get taken down by Madea's no-bullshit attitude. Tyler Perry has always entertained a bullying streak in his Madea films. Seriously, Madea just rails on this lady's obvious stupidity in scene after scene, and it's glorious. And for the first time ever, the film seems to know she's nuts and declares open season on her as a result. A Madea Christmas kind of stalls out on the evil front, but we really get a dumb doozy when it comes to Eileen. They already know about the biracial couple because they are the warmest, most open and caring rednecks on earth.Įvery Tyler Perry movie needs someone to hate, and ire-raising Tyler Perry characters come in only two flavors: Evil and stupid. Meanwhile, the husband's redneck parents (Larry the Cable Guy and Kathy Najimy) show up as well. This is important because Eileen is a full-blown racist. But because Eileen doesn't call ahead, her daughter has a rough time keeping her secret marriage to a white guy under wraps. Plot-wise, A Madea Christmas provides a kind of racially reversed riff on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner where this crazy (crazy crazy crazy) lady named Eileen drags Madea to Alabama (where everyone's accent, when they remember to have one, sounds like British people making fun of Little House on the Prairie) to surprise her daughter, Lacey, for Christmas. Here she gets rural and accidentally walks in a Klan meeting, goddammit. All she did in New York was complain about how expensive everything was. In the same way Madea's Big Happy Family offers a 2nd draft version of what Tyler Perry attempted in Madea Goes to Jail, A Madea Christmas smooths out and executes the larger goals of he failed to reach with Madea's Witness Protection. Here he gives it another shot and gets the balance just right. We saw her visit New York City and live with a bunch of white people in Madea's Witness Protection, but while that film isn't bad, necessarily, it often feels like Madea walking onto someone else's sitcom and not really holding her own. But rather than repeat that film's formula, Tyler Perry now seems eager to mix Madea with the larger world. It took until Madea's Big Happy Family for Tyler Perry to finally get it right. Madea's evolution from marquee cameo player to actual marquee star has been fascinating to watch. Tyler Perry used her to get audiences to the theater, but gave them only a fraction of the character they actually wanted to see. At first, she was just a loud but minor figure hanging out on the edge of melodramas that barely concerned her. Tyler Perry has not had an easy time figuring out the best way to use this character, partially because his comedy skills are so largely accidental and partially because he hates her. I don't really know where to begin with this movie other than to say it's a treasure trove for Madea enthusiasts, of which this site might have four, me included. It lacks most of his amoral insanity, but it fills that divot with lots of weird humor and one of the strangest bromances I've ever seen. A Madea Christmas, for the first time in several years, meets those expectations. But once you get into Perry, you begin to develop certain expectations. Even his very best films teem with nonsense that automatically disqualify them from typical quality standards. When I say a Tyler Perry movie is especially good, I only really mean that in comparison to other Tyler Perry films.
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