Only Tyler Perry could morph a nothing holiday film into a referendum on beating your children. And only Tyler Perry would use this forum to stump for the “pro-beating” position. I’m not even going to address the morality here, especially as it’s wed to a ridiculous supposition that sassy behavior -leading to prostitution, drugs, gang membership and film abuse- is somehow unique to the present generation. No, what’s important is that a cheap comic premise reserved most often for script-desperate TV sitcoms became a podium for a man the size of an NFL linebacker to preach to us the value of physically abusing your small children.
It is Halloween, and the local rural frat house is throwing a party. This has attracted the attention of school girl Tiffany (Diamond White) and her pals. Uh oh. Tiffany’s father is Brian (Perry) and he is not pleased with seventeen-year-old Tiffany’s desire to party. Queue the series of tiresome clichés: Tiffany accedes to dad’s demands to his face, but secretly plans to sneak out anyway. Tyler Perry’s stilted direction makes it very clear that Tiffany is a problem. Dad has to go out of town that very instant, so he asks Madea (also Perry) to come babysit. Of course he does. And Madea schleps -to Brian’s also strangely rural house- with a collection of ill-defined old people who clearly have nothing better to do than babysit a girl who doesn’t need a babysitter.
When you summon up ideas for Boo! A Madea Halloween, what comes to mind? I thought a real life ghost story might be fun – see how Madea treats the undead. How about if Madea trick-or-treats on some flimsy premise? How about an actual slasher-type story? Now that might actually work, because the worst part of the Friday-the-13th genre is not the repetition, but the fact that I eventually start rooting for Jason because the characters are so weak. What took place wasn’t the worst thing Tyler’s ever written, but it wasn’t great by any stretch, either –when Madea discovers Tiffany’s disappearance, she goes to the frat house, joins the party, and shows the boys “her” “boobs.” I’m not kidding. And in the ensuing chaos, we get a rip off of Neighbors.
So the main plot wasn’t great, but didn’t bug me. The ugliest part of this film took place back at Brian’s house where the geritol club took turns emasculating Brian for his previous emasculation at the hands of his mouthy daughter. Tales were spun of how “in my day, all we needed was a switch.” This escalated to personal tales of abuses brought to Brian himself as a child from several relatives; this comedic mountain ascended to a revelation about how once Brian was thrown off the roof by his father, losing a testicle in the process. Ho ho ho! What a laugh riot. No, no. Please, do go into more detail. What fun! And clearly the four-year-old Brian learned his lesson but good. Sure, he was crippled in the process, but learned him some manners, didn’t he?
This would be funny, of course, if anyone actually found it funny to throw a child off a roof, simultaneously sending him to the emergency room and skewering his testicle with a pencil. In fact this particular joke might have been a bit funny, if disturbing, when I first heard it in While You Were Sleeping. Now? This is a testimony to cruelty. Here’s the weird part for me – Tyler Perry plays three different characters in the film – “Madea” you know. “Brian” is the straight man of the Madea films, a milquetoast family man closest to Tyler Perry in real life, and “Joe,” Brian’s uncensored father. Joe celebrates the b-word and the n-word like a performance artist, which I accept for context even if it makes me uncomfortable. It also makes Brian uncomfortable. Brian has to tell his father on several occasions “not to use that language in my house” for which Joe
pays exactly the heed as a steamroller pays to litter. So … given what we’ve learned here, isn’t the correct play now to go throw Joe off the roof? Here is a fellow in your home sassing and not abiding by the rules of the house. You’ve preached that disrespectful behavior must be met with the fist by the most powerful domestic authortity figure. What’s stopping you? Not only is it what you’ve been preaching, it would be poetic justice, would it not? And if the old man dies from the effort? Ha! What a lark! Now you have banter for your next film.
Look, it’s not like I ever look forward to Madea films, but I kinda had hopes for this one – maybe in the horror setting, we can see simply comic Madea. Is that too much to ask? Halloween is candy and scares. That’s it. No talk of divorce, no doling out self-destructive life lessons, right? No such luck in either case. While there is probably more “comic” Madea here than in any previous iteration, I cannot separate the jokes from the personality. I’m left with a nausea from the pulpit where Tyler Perry is encouraging me to beat my own seventeen-year-old. Any possible smiles from sugar treats and killer clowns are drowned in questionable gerenation-centric morality. I’m left sorry that I even gave this film a chance.
I don’t know what makes me sorer
The direction or ‘Dea the Deplorer
Instead of a treat
Got tricked complete
Whaddaya know? This film was a horror
Rated PG-13, 103 Minutes
D: Tyler Perry
W: Tyler Perry
Genre: Preaching a mountain out of a mole-hill
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Generation baiters
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Fans of Halloween
