2. Madea’s Witness Protection (Dir. Tyler Perry)
The movie: Madea – a fat quipping black woman played by Tyler Perry and star of many other Madea-titled movies – takes in the Needlemans, a family confined to the Witness Protection Program after being wrongly associated with a Mafia crime. A vague plot ensues, in which common sense is thrown out and replaced with… well, nothing.
Why it’s awful: Tyler Perry is the most overpaid person working in Hollywood today. I mean, I know he’s not a critical success so to speak, but I use the word overpaid because he obviously has a huge fanbase and makes a ton of cash, all of which is horribly undeserved. Don’t people understand that Perry is just insulting them with every movie he makes? Yes, Perry fans, the man is selling you the same vehicles over and over again in vaguely dissimilar packages, most of which are made with so little care and effort that he shouldn’t be able to get away with it. And yet…
Madea’s Witness Protection just reeks of half-assed complacently. The jokes fall flat at every turn, and any novelty in the fact that, wow, Perry is dressed as a fat woman, has worn off long ago. The real problem, though, is in the execution, which doesn’t feel like a labor of love that just didn’t come together – no, that would have been admirable, at least. This feels like a money-maker for the sake of being a money-maker… and though that’s primarily the reason that films exist in the first place – to generate profit – this movie treats it audiences like a bunch of morons. And to be perfectly honest, if you go and see another Madea film after this one, that’s exactly what you are.
Low point: At one point, a character asks for Wi-Fi. Madea replies: ”Sure, I can make you a waffle.”
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