I Get It

The charm of Tyler Perry's Madea movies has worked its magic on me. This journey goes back to when I was in college, and "Diary Of A Mad Black Woman" was in a local theater. It was one of those movies that doesn't have a proper sign to go next to the showtimes outside the auditorium. It sure drew a crowd in Chicago, though. I was blindsided by its popularity, and I wasn't the only one, but people who knew made a pile of money, I'm sure.

Years later- maybe a year or two ago - I saw "Madea Goes To Jail - and it is a quintessential example. These movies are like Bollywood movies in a way. Bollywood movies, I have discerned, are sort of like vaudeville or an old time movie experience. They give you a little of everything: comedy, action, drama, singing, dancing- whatever anyone could want out of a movie, a Bollywood movie has it. A Madea movie has only a little bit less.

The thing that gets people in the door, I guess, is Madea herself. She's an absurd, over the top character of what I guess is a ghetto wise lady. She says she's in the ghetto, anyway. The area looks ok to me. Anyway, she is the straw that stirs the drink when it comes to the comedy component of these films. You could get the idea that that's all there is from the way they sell them, but there's so much more. Madea is typically hardly in them.

What's the rest of the movie? Well, as over the top as Madea's end is in broad comedy, that's how far the rest goes in the direction of melodrama. That word scarcely captures it, but that's what it is. What's amazing is how cozy the scenes aspiring to Jerry Lewis-style comedy are with the scenes that are aiming for something between "Requiem For A Dream" and "Precious". They are HEAVY, but you have to have both in these movies, or it's unbalanced.

I saw most of the rest of the movies apart from Madea Goes To Jail in a marathon session, and I can say that the early ones get this balance right, but that the latter ones fall too heavily in the direction of the comedy. One features Eugene Levy, Denise Richards, Tom Arnold and Doris Roberts, none of whom can pull off the heavy stuff. The other ones, though, come highly recommended by me. They're manic and absurd, but they are fun.