A Madea Christmas Movie Review
Written by Shelby Barker, Former Student on Thursday, December 19, 2013
At last, A Madea Christmas has opened in theaters Friday, December 13. Being the eighth installment to the Madea franchise. Like most Tyler Perry films, A Madea Christmas had originally been a play. Both are written, produced and directed by Tyler Perry himself.
The movie starts out with the star of the film Madea, played by Tyler Perry, dressed as Santa at a department store. Aunt Bam, played by Cassi Davis, had provided Madea with a job as a greeter at her work and Madea soon becomes frustrated with the customer’s attitudes and demands so she attacks them with long, witty, ebonics lectures that made me giggle with excitement. When her employer begs her to leave quietly Madea lashes back saying “go on! Go and call the cops," because Madea has previously been to jail in Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail, she has a sort of been there done that attitude which is pretty awesome for an older woman.
The rest of the movie takes place in Georgia, the deep-south where for Christmas Madea is visiting her niece Lacey, played by Tika Sumpter, who is also Aunt Bam’s daughter. Because the south is so notorious for racism towards African-Americans, Madea has an encounter with the KKK which she sprints from reminding the viewer that Madea is really Perry, a man.
The main conflict is between Aunt Bam and Lacey. Aunt Bam has always envisioned her daughter with an African-American man so she brings along Lacey’s ex-boyfriend who once cheated on her and is now divorced. What Lacey is afraid to tell her mother is that she is already married to a white man named Connor, played by Eric Lively. Throughout the movie Connor's parents played by Daniel Lawrence and Kathy Najimy go along with Lacey’s tactic of portraying Conner as just a farm hand, because they agree that Aunt Bam is scary and they need to wait for the right time to “break it to her easy”.
I won’t give the rest away, but overall the movie is sort of cheesy and a bit predictable. It is definitely not Perry’s best, but I was very happy with the fact that Madea was featured in almost all of the scenes. Like most people I feel the more Madea the better.
As for the soundtrack, it wasn’t amazing, but good. It’s mostly Christmas themed music, but other people really seemed to enjoy it because this is only the second movie Perry has made where a soundtrack has been released with it. There definitely are some good artists such as Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5, Ashanti and Boyz 2 Men. They are mostly African-American artists which makes sense, because the main characters are African-Americans dealing with racism, a common theme that Tyler Perry is well-known for.
From cheesy Christmas tree transitions to racial indifferences, A Madea Christmas definitely plays up every emotion possible. If you see this movie and like it you should totally check out some of Tyler Perry’s other movies such as Why Did I Get Married? They are all quite similar.
