Madea's Family Renuion
|  The cinema of Tyler Perry is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Either you're in synch with Perry's wavelength and appreciate his ability to turn on a dime from drama to comedy, his reassuring and effective deployment of familiar character types, and his earnest moral conviction, or you're irritated by the tonal unevenness of his films, his reliance on stereotypes, and his tendency to preach. There's not much room in-between, which critics and audiences learned last year when Perry emerged seemingly from the ether with his film debut, Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005). Many critics hated it, many audiences loved it, and suddenly a strong-voiced playwright with a sizable core following had been elevated from cult icon to the cultural center stage.Without missing a beat, Perry has taken his newfound visibility and run with it, producing his second film, Madea's Family Reunion, less than a year later. Not only did Perry write the script from his own play (previously filmed and released straight to DVD in 2002), produce the film, play three roles in it, and cowrite the music, but he has also taken over he directorial reigns, ensuring that it is a Tyler Perry movie through and through (his name is credited on screen no less than four times before the title and several times thereafter). Madea's Family Reunion is everything Diary of a Mad Black Woman was and a little bit more. Once again, Perry tells a story of familial strife that is focused particularly on the trials and tribulations of modern black women and whose ultimate theme is that of the healing power of forgiveness. Lisa Arrindell Anderson and Rochelle Aytes play half-sisters Vanessa and Lisa, both of whom are faced with difficult choices about the men in their lives. At the behest of their controlling mother (Lynn Whitfield), the much-favored daughter Lisa is engaged to Carlos (Blair Underwood), an extremely successful and wealthy investment banker who also happens to be a violent and abusive sociopath. Vanessa, on the other hand, already has two children by two different absent fathers and is now tentatively entering into a relationship with Frankie (Boris Kodjoe), a handsome, well-meaning bus driver and aspiring artist who wants to crack through her protective wall and restore her faith in the power of love. All of this is set against the backdrop of an impending family reunion organized by Perry's favorite recurring character, Mabel "Madea" Simmons (played by Perry himself in drag), the family's no-nonsense matriarchal figure (she is slightly toned down here, with no references to pot smoking and not a single scene in which she wields a firearm). As in Diary of a Black Woman, Madea is a larger-than-life character and a theatrical conceit through and through. Her coexistence within the realms of both utter fantasy, suggested by Perry's knowingly bad make-up and drag costume, and familiar reality, evidenced by the audience's complete identification with and embrace of her, makes her one of the most intriguing of recent movie characters. Madea crashes through the narrative with gusto and hilarity, and if the movie ever sags even a bit, you always know her character is waiting just around the corner to kick-start it back to life. Perry's tonal range in Madea's Family Reunion is incredibly varied, yet it all remains pitched at least one notch above where you think it should be, which makes his style radically disjunctive even when it is at its most familiar. He shifts quickly between comedy and sometimes excruciatingly painful drama, and there is not a difficult bit of subject matter that he won't cover, whether it be spousal abuse, child neglect, or even a desperate mother serving up her daughter to a pedophilic second husband. Some feel that Perry is exploiting this subject matter because of his tonal shifts and also because he finds as much humor in familial violence as he does drama (for example, Madea's answer to a lying foster child involves a belt, yet we are meant to be appalled when Carlos hits Lisa). There is some potential truth in such an observation in that, on the surface at least, Perry does appear to be having his cake and eating it to. Yet, Madea's Family Reunion is, in its own way, just being honest about our relationship to and understanding of violence. It can be both comical and slapsticky, as it is when Madea deploys it, or it can be vicious and upsetting, as when Carlos slaps Lisa around or threatens her with death if she were to leave. There is also the question of intent; although we may not all agree with corporal punishment for children, Madea's use of the belt comes from her genuine sense of tough love, whereas Carlos's abusive tendencies are simply extensions of his warped patriarchal sense of dominance over women. Madea's Family Reunion maintains a strong forward drive, alternating among the principal storylines without a great deal of finesse, but with a palpable sense of energy. Perry's conviction is genuine, which smooths over some of the rougher spots in his narrative and even makes the preachiness of the film's final 15 minutes, including a powerful reading of poetry by Maya Angelou at what has to be the tackiest wedding in the history of cinema, not only bearable, but oddly powerful. Some may have ideological issues with Perry's worldview (which includes a strong and unapologetic Christian viewpoint) and some may not feel comfortable with his unique, baroque style, but the simple fact is that, in their own crazy way, his films work. Copyright ©2006 James Kendrick Thoughts? E-mail James Kendrick All images copyright ©2006 Lionsgate |
Overall Rating: 
(3)
