A Madea Family Funeral (2019)

A joyous family reunion turns into an unexpected nightmare when Madea and the gang find themselves planning a funeral in the backwoods of Georgia (Source- google.com)

Trailer- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id61hcbdMZA

Rating- PG-13
Genre- Comedy
Warnings- swearing/mild sexual visuals/drug use

                                             
NOTE: I talk about my experiences watching Tyler Perry movies in the introduction, so if you want to skip to the actual review, please scroll until you see this: READ HERE.

Well all bad things must come to an end, right?

It wouldn't feel right of me to let this final Madea movie pass on without saying a few words, and this post will contain a lot of words. Now will they be good or bad? I'm not sure at this point, because at the time I wrote this introduction, I didn't see the movie yet.

Normally, I write everything down right after I watch a movie but I felt motivation to get my thoughts out about the Madea franchise and my experience growing up with it.

If you're new to my blog, I have mentioned in my BOO! A Madea Halloween review that I have watched Tyler Perry films throughout my life. Although Perry is also known for his television shows, other movies not including Madea, and his plays back in the day, it was mainly the Madea films that left a staple in my childhood (although looking back on it, maybe a child shouldn't have watched films depicting abuse, gun violence, or mentions of sexual assault...but that's besides the point)

For me, Perry movies were always so heartfelt and impactful; my first memory regarding this was when I should've been about eight years old and I watched Diary of a Mad Black Woman in theaters. I remember how wet my face was with tears streaming over the sheer power of the acting displayed on screen that made me sympathize with the characters.

The acting, the music, how the movie took its time to show characters evolve and become opposite of what they were in the past, or show us why they didn't want to change, was all so enthralling to my little mind. I would later go on to want to become a novelist and create stories with value like Perry did.

But in recent years, Madea movies have shown less of this value and it's not just because I got older.

                                  

         (This scene is from the film, Madea's Family Reunion)

People can argue about how his old films may've not been as great as fans made it out to be, but what I can say is that at least you felt the heart behind the story. I can rewatch any of his old movies and still get goosebumps at the realistic conflict that not many people want to address like marital abuse, drug addiction, etc. or laugh at the comic relief that was Madea or even learn something valuable from Madea, as she wasn't just someone to laugh at but a mentor as well. Your stern but supportive grandmother, if you will.

Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)
Madea's Family Reunion (2006)
I Can Do Bad All by Myself (2009)

All of these (and maybe a few I'm forgetting at this time) have a soft spot in my heart not just because I grew up watching them, but because it revealed the thoughtful side of Perry. The side that while may be a bit outrageous at times and go on too long with certain stereotypes, he still gave you quality material overall to show that he cared about the value of his work for his dedicated audience.

There are two movies of his that I'd put in my middle pile of not great but not horrible which would be Meet the Browns and Madea goes to Jail (2009) but at least I can still bear to watch it whenever I am bored and have nothing better to do, yet since all of these movies have passed the decline of quality in Perry's Madea related works has gone sharply downhill.

Madea's Big Happy Family (2011)
A Madea Christmas (2013)
and of course, BOO! A Madea Halloween (2016)

All this and a few more, I'm sure, have depicted signs to me that Perry's love for Madea movies has gone south. The soul that resonated within his old films no longer seems to be present in his latest movies. The acting nowadays is usually too over the top or too mean spirited, with each character either being a boisterous chatterbox who always has some wacky line to say or a disrespectful and nasty individual who you want to punch the minute you see them on screen.

Instead of the elongated slow jazz or RnB musical numbers that exemplify the essence of a scene taking place on screen, the musical scores in recent years are something out of an episode of a silly cartoon show. There are more goofy instrumentals that play in the background with maybe a couple of decent RnB songs in the beginning and the end of the movies to remind us that these movies are about love and family, even though most of it showed an entirely different story.

Yes, Madea movies for me follow the quote of, "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain," with the films turning out to be the so-called villain in my book. At this point, I'm not sure what people see in Madea films anymore: Is it to support Perry? Is it because it's still funny somehow? Or is it to see how awful it can lower the bar of filmmaking?

Perry has certainly risen above the ashes of a troubled upbringing to become one of the most beloved filmmakers known to man, which is why it hurts my heart to see his passion for his work go so haywire. Yet, even with all of that, A Madea Family Funeral was not going to be something I missed out on.

While I refused to see the sequel to BOO! A Madea Halloween, I chose to watch this one in theaters because it's the last Madea related movie. Supposedly.

I wanted it to come full circle for me, from that 8 year old girl who grew up with Perry's works to the 22 year old woman having the power to speak my mind about what I thought about this final tale of Madea.

READ HERE

Did the movie make me shout amen for finally breaking out of Perry's odd string of faulty films, or did I watch the end credits thanking God that this franchise was going to be dead forever?

The plot of A Madea Family Funeral was about the shenanigans that would ensue after a family member passes away.

This film actually did make me laugh at several points, which is much better than how I reacted to BOO! A Madea Halloween where all I did was get annoyed and almost fall asleep. At least here, there were some strong lines that were very funny and I kept in my head to possibly use on my own someday and some scenes that when the shenanigans were at an all time high, I was laughing along with the audience.

I can tell that Perry uses the comedy of unbelievability to his advantage, where something is so outrageous that you laugh at it because you can't believe that it's happening. It usually happens very quickly, like someone punching someone else or a car blowing up after someone says everything will be okay, so we're naturally taken off guard and laugh as a response to that shock.

Other than that...this was a mess.

                               

The plot itself felt too simplistic to have it run for 1 hour and 42 minutes, but you could really tell that the movie was trying to reach that time length with how much it derived away from the actual plot. The person that the funeral is being held for is not given a lot of background to understand who he is until after he is told to have passed on, so the shock of him being dead doesn't hit me as hard as I think Perry expected it to. In addition, the family that is being focused on in this movie has never been introduced in any previous Madea movie before so seeing them grieve serves no sympathy on my end because I don't know who these people are and how strong a bond they had with the individual.

The only way I would know is through them talking about it which is another negative on this movie because it brings up the classic 'show don't tell' rule, where it would've benefited the movie if we saw more scenes of the family interacting together with the would-be deceased person instead of jumping back to long dialogues with Madea in the gang- which I'll get to later.

The characters are all types of people that I've witnessed before in Perry movies that at this point only seem to be there because it's typical of a Perry movie to have a sensitive man or woman who is being betrayed, the mean family member who is given barely any dimension to their character, or the matriarchal figure who is taken advantage of till she stands up for herself. This is a common complaint of Perry movies where the character tropes are overdone, and it shows in this movie as well. Can't we just have a normal family for once?

However, the family's inner dilemmas could've been better to watch than sticking with Madea and the gang which consist of Uncle Joe, Aunt Bam, Hattie, and a newly inducted member Uncle Heathrow who along with Madea and Joe, is acted by Perry himself. Perry's straight-man character, Brain, is often tagged along with the gang but it's really the elderly characters that take the cake for most annoying part of the movie.

There's another phrase that is often used called, 'less is more', where the less you do of something it's actually better and provides more value to something. That's the rule Perry should've taken for writing these characters. The elderly characters steal the show but do it in the worst possible way, by having constant dialogue back and forth about different things that annoy them to joking about the same topics in other movies like Madea being a man, smoking weed, and sexual innuendos in general and this feels like it goes on forever. I think I was 15 minutes into the movie and nobody was even claimed to be dead yet. It was mostly just Madea and the gang riffing of one another, taking over moments that could've been used for more serious scenes.

                           
I get that it's a comedy movie, but even Mean Girls (2004) and Deadpool (2016) had its darker moments and that's what made the comedy even more special because the audience knows it won't always have that. But with this, you could have the family sobbing over the family member being dead and Madea would charge in with a joke, it throws the whole vibe off! I seriously believe that there was no moment longer than 2 minutes that contained a purely down-to-earth serious moment for the characters, except for one.

One scene that plays near the end of the movie delivers a messages that I think Perry wanted to portray in the mist of all of the chaos that was a really powerful and opened my eyes to the sacrifices some people make for their loved ones. But even then, the scene is interrupted by the elderly characters reacting loudly to what people were saying as if they were the audience themselves. There is no breather from these antics, and it made me disappointed for the people involved in that big scene because it looked like one that could have been performed better in a different movie.

This big dramatic scene doesn't come out of nowhere as much as it felt in BOO! A Madea Halloween, where one of the characters suddenly reveals a big family issue that was never mentioned in the movie. Here, it's still out of place but looking back on it there was some build up to that climax, even if it was shrouded until the unnecessary chatter.

Perry also included scenes of dialogue where he would use Madea and the gang as the "voice of reason" when all it did was make me question whether or not Perry wanted me to agree with them or not. A lot of what they say is questionable, and it doesn't help that they constantly bring up the fact that they used to be pimps, hoes, drug dealers or murderers in their younger years. I can't tell if what they said at times was to just make the audience laugh or to really give insight, but either way it wasn't delivered right because it was cluttered with all this other improvised back-and-forth.

Seriously, I noticed that there was a 5 minute talk between them all then it cut to the family for like 1 minute and then it returned to the group talking again for even longer! All of that free space could've developed the characters that we actually needed to learn more about.

When I say that Perry's love for Madea went down, I didn't feel entirely right saying that. I'm sure he still loves writing about Madea for audiences, but the way in which he goes about gaining more publicity for it is damn near disrespectful. Like I said before, older films of his aren't perfect. I'm sure I'll go back and watch them someday and point out some very serious problems, but even then the difference between the older Madea and the new Madea is night and day. Maybe someday I can review those movies so you get a better sense of what I'm talking about, but that's not a promise.

                              

A Madea Family Funeral was a poor end to a legendary character. If this really is the last movie, which I doubt, then this was not a thrilling conclusion for Madea in the slightest. She came off as incredibly annoying and redundant along with her friends, and the other people we're supposed to care for are stereotypes of other characters I've already seen. Everyone treats the dead person as a joke, which even for a comedy was pretty inappropriate and the parts where it did feel like things were taken seriously, it stuck out because it didn't feel like it made sense. I could say that at the very least there were several funny zingers in the mix and there were beneficial messages as well scattered amongst the rubble.

Would I watch it again? No. Would I recommend it? No.

I'll tell you now, if Perry does create another Madea movie after this I don't think I'm going to watch it because once you say it's over, then it's over, and honestly this franchise has felt over for a long time now. Before I give my score, I want to end this review with a speech given in Madea's Family Reunion by a character named Myrtle who was played by Cicely Tyson. Myrtle announced this speech among black men and women who she witnessed acting like fools beforehand: being loud with one another, acting promiscuous and ghetto in front of children.

The speech was to remind them that they are better that how they act and they must be good role models to others and to themselves because they have more worth than what other people expect them to be. This speech makes me think of my own thoughts on the evolution of Madea: from strict but lovable mentor to inappropriate and rude so-called gangster. This character deserved better, and while there may not be a redemption, I hope to see future writers give their characters the respect that they deserve. If they're meant to be mean and nasty then fine, but portray them intelligently, not just to create chaos for the sake of chaos.

With that being said...Good Bye Madea...

Note: This is not the full speech

"As we marched up the road this afternoon, what we saw were young men gambling, fighting, cussing. Women with no clothes on gyrating all over on this land...The man and woman who were born here gave birth to this generation. They were slaves. They worked this ground, but they bought it from the widow of the slave owner and that's the kind of blood we having running through our veins. That's the stock we are made of... 

What happened to us? Who are you? Do you know who you are? What happened to the pride and the dignity and the love and respect that we had for one another? Where did it go? And how, how do we get it back?...Young black women, you are more than your thighs and your hips. You are beautiful, strong, powerful. I want more from you. Take your place. 

I want every single one of you, young man, young woman, turn to the next person standing alongside of you. Grab them and hug them and tell them that you love 'em...That's how you start from this moment. When you leave this reunion today, you take that with you."

I give A Madea Family Funeral a 2 out of 5 stars.



SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
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The story goes immediately to these group of people and a few minutes in, I'm not sure how some of them are related to one another. Is the one that doesn't like Gia the sister of Jessie or just a friend? Is Sylvia and Will related to the family in any way or are they a couple supporting their friend's parents' anniversary?

"Mom and dad are so cute together, They have the best marriage, etc." Can you make dialogue any more obvious that something bad is going to happen to the mom and dad?

Oh boy, here come to pain in the movie- Uncle Heathrow. Came strolling it right on time.

My mom was really not feeling the fact that Perry was using Heathrow's character as a joke for his stoma. Meanwhile, I was just smiling through the pain.

It's Madea and the gang...in the same circular position like in the halloween movie where they talked for more than 5 minutes straight about Brain's child abuse...they're not going to do that again are they?

Oh my god, they are! It's not about the abuse but their back and forth has been going on forever! Just move on!

"It's faux" "faux what?" "faux dollas" That was pretty funny. There are a lot of gem lines like that.

Never in my years of watching Madea have I heard either Madea or Joe mention that they had a brother.

Why show the scene of the mom and dad arriving just for them to leave right away? The scene doesn't last long and I learn nothing of the parents other than what they look like. Couldn't they have just extended the scene just a little bit so I can get a better sense of who the father, Anthony is? Because by the end of the movie he's much more than he seems, but there is very little clue to this other than, "I'm going to a hotel." The worst part is, they make this scene short to return to Madea and the gang who we just saw talk for minutes on end!

"You flirt then we all going to jail" another gem line! I wonder if I can keep a tally of them...

Okay Perry...where are you going with this? Your character, Brain, who you play without any makeup (so, you) is arguing with everyone else that black people get shot because they don't obey the law. Then Madea and them argue back that it's because you stay and wait for the officer and that's how you get shot, and because of this Brain needs to drive away before the cop arrives to the car. What I feel like Perry is trying to say is that Brain is in the wrong and Madea is in the right, but then Madea doesn't have good advice clearly, yet Brain is too stubborn to imagine that black people have been killed for no reason a lot of times. Am I supposed to agree with a side?

What took the cop, Willis, so long to approach the car? He ordered them already and then there was a big discussion on how to handle the police. What was Willis doing during that huge gap, just sitting there drinking coffee?

I don't know how to feel about that cop scene, with Willis being overly dramatic about Brain keeping his hands on the wheel. On one hand, I've seen other movies or shows make fun of serious issues like this in an even greater manner that I was fine with. On the other hand, what the hell? Willis arrives already steamed up (even though he sounded calm in the car) and yells at Brain with his nostrils flaring and eyes bulging out (which btw, bad acting), and this is supposed to prove a point that people should break the law and leave a scene? Okay, let me look at it as a pure comedy and not what I expected it to be in the past...it's still not funny. Again, the acting is horrible and everyone is too over the top that not one person has a bunch of sense (and yes, I'm including Brain because he suddenly gets all high and mighty in this scene). Also, with two long talks with the same people back to back it's not enjoyable to see yet another back and forth talk that is redundant and childish. It's just the same thing:

"Keep your hands where I can see them, now reach for something. Don't reach for that!"

"You should've left"

and repeat.

"I'm really perturbed!," the way Brain said that line after the cop left was funny. 3.

"They got all that ass whooping from change," Uncle Joe, you just keep the gems coming!

Obvious infidelity is obvious.

So you can tell that your dad is in the next room because of how he's moaning? Eww.

Another five minute talk, this time about the way Anthony died, giving no time for A.J to grieve over the loss of his father. There has been not one serious moment yet, and this is shaping up to be this most comedic of the Madea movies: A Madea Family FUNERAL.

Take three shots every time there's a long period of discussion between Madea and the gang. You'll be having your own funeral.

Jesus, a man just died and there's no serious moment! Comedies still have serious moments to not overwhelm you with too much humor. I know that sounds weird, but too much of anything gets stale after a while and the more they converse about the funny way Anthony died the more stale it gets and the more disappointed I am.

(playing on the word, hotel) "These hoes don't tell" Our first gem from Madea everybody! Where are we at, four?

Why was Jessie just standing outside looking at A.J and Reneé argue? It was a heated one and your brother is outside with a woman yelling at her and you don't at least call out, "Is everything okay?" until after the woman leaves?

Of course Jessie wants A.J's to be his best man! Because A.J has always been like a father to him when Anthony wasn't around, wait...Where do we see that? Where have we ever seen A.J being father-like to Jessie? Where have we seen Anthony not being that way to Jessie? If Anthony was so bad, why does the family care about him? All of this is TOLD to us, not SHOWN, and that makes a huge difference.

You should've been there in the theater when Will (who is played by David Ortega) came on screen shirtless and the women were hollering over him. I heard this line in particular, "DAMN! I forgot about my boyfriend for a second."

(the capital letters is representing Perry using his normal deep voice)
"Your daddy is DEAD" Again with the joke about Madea really being a man...

"People died who have never died before," I laughed at that one. Gem number 5.

"Better my name in the program than on the cover," I want to use that line someday Heathrow, because that was clever! 6.

The joke about funerals being long can be funny, but they really overdid it with having us believe people would be there for 9 hours. The trailer makes it look like the funeral was going to be the most fun part of all of this, but the movie describes how boring it is to sit through. Since this joke goes on for too long, the long funeral doesn't get funnier it's just more telling of the movie as a whole.

Pam's speech about "You do all you can do" is when I have to reach the word limit on an essay.

In the commercials, Madea says that the funeral was going to be lit but all through it people complained that it was too long. Madea is a terrible planner.

My favorite scene was the people rushing out of the church after the casket popped open, but I got to ask, "Who just runs out of the church?!" I get the friends and lovers Anthony had, but the family too? Wouldn't they check on the body to see if it's okay?

The mom conveys a powerful speech about how she was "weak" because of love after A.J blames her for staying with their dad. It got a round of applause near the end and everything, but this is another reason why it's better to A- lay off the comedy, and B- show don't tell. For A, there has constantly been jokes about Anthony being a cheating and perverted man which lowers the sadness of his death and makes him out to be a laughingstock to the audience. So when this scene shows up, it feels out of place and from another movie. Why should I care about how this man was or how he treated this woman? While I could infer that that was an issue in their marriage, no part of me felt bad for the lady until this moment because I'm more focused on how many more sex jokes can be made. For B- again, if they had just expanded the first and only scene Anthony was shown alive, we could've gained insight in their relationship. I'm not saying Anthony should've been shown hitting the wife, but an indicator in his living days to reveal the true man he was.

"You wanted your daddy so badly, you ended up with someone just like him," Damn!

"Don't call me unless somebody die," I want to use this line too. I'm losing track of the amount of Gems...

"He calling from Hell!" You know the drill.

Mike Tyson cameo!

For a supposedly final Madea film, that ending was boring.
I was expecting one more cameo from Heathrow.

Total Gem lines: 9

I doubt this is the last Madea movie, not just because this will probably make a lot of money and encourage Perry to do another one but also because it doesn't feel over. If this was the final movie of a character I've developed for over 14 years, there should be some sort of dedication to the person. A line at the end saying, "Thank you for following Madea's story" or a montage of Madea's best moments, or at least a dialogue where someone asks what Madea is going to do in the future and she's like she'll travel the world or something. This ending is more focused on characters we barely knew and Madea is the facilitator. I feel like an appropriate ending to a Madea film is to have it center around her life, in a more serious way of course, and then at the end she may finally tell Uncle Joe that she loves his and is grateful they lived so long together as siblings despite their bickering or something in that regard. The ending just felt a little rushed and incomplete. Not at all the sort of closure I would expect from the last movie of a beloved character.