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A Madea Homecoming
How old is Tyler Perry’s spitfire matron Madea? Her age isn’t specified (I’d say she’s in her mid-70s), but whatever it is she’s that many years young.
She has a sneaky-dog irascibility that won’t quit. And Tyler Perry can’t quit her. He had hinted that “A Madea Family Funeral,” in 2019, might be the last Madea outing.
I say that with or without it, Perry would have returned to Madea, because she’s more than his greatest hit.
she’s his unleashed id, the character he’s addicted to playing because she expresses so many of his angels and demons.
Of course, she’s also an eternal crowd-pleaser. The first Tyler Perry movie, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” (which included an appearance by Madea), was released 17 years ago today.
At the time, he’d already been doing Madea onstage for years. But Madea, as a character, has now attained the status of folklore.
I’ve seen and reviewed nearly all of Perry’s films, and if you asked me if I’m a Perry fan, I’d say “on and off,” by which I don’t mean that I like some of his movies and dislike others.
I mean that in almost all his comedy/soap-opera mashups, there are moments I love and others that leave me shaking my head with an okay-he-didn’t-just-do-that disbelief.
The Tyler Perry mix: the good, the bad, and the ugly, the sincere and the outrageous, the clever and the amateur, the diabolical and the banal, all rolled up in a big goodbye hug of a Love yourself!
“A Madea Homecoming,” the first Perry film to be released on Netflix, is based on Perry’s 2020 stage work “Madea’s Farewell Play,” so I went in expecting it to be a relatively restrained affair.
Actually, it’s the fastest, funniest “Madea” movie in quite some time. Remember when Eddie Murphy played half a dozen family members in “Nutty Professor II:
The Klumps”? Whenever Perry plays Madea along with at least one of her kin, he shares Murphy’s spirit of cussed, ribald, let-it-rip brashness.