Netflixable? Tyler Perry’s Back in Drag for “Madea’s Destination Wedding”

You just know that what few conditions Netflix probably had in the big fat contract it gave the prolific Tyler Perry, one of them was “Give us a Madea movie every now and then.”

Because even if his hilariously outspoken drag alter ego had run her course with a paying theatrical movie audience, there are plenty of people who can’t get enough of the wit and wisdom of the two-fisted, foul-mouthed font of great granny giggles that Madea serves up.

And you knew that his farewell tour with the character, “Madea’s Farewell Play” was not the last we’d see of her, her curmedgeonly cuddle bunny Joe (Perry as well) and that vast extended family of insult-slinging slaptstickers, including The Browns.

“Madea’s Destination Wedding” is like all of the recent Madea movies — scribbled in haste, with dashes of improvised insults and the like by Perry and his repertory company — Cassi Davis as the teetering bowling pin Aunt Bam, David Mann as bad, broad and loud Leroy Brown, Tamela J. Mann as as Cora, etc.

His debut feature, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” had some edge. But as Perry went to the Madea well time and again, the formula boiled down to the bare basics — find a situation to put her in — Jail, Christmas, a Funeral, Halloween — and turn the heffer loose in the china shop, bitching, threatening, swaggering and insulting until the closing credits.

So the set up here is a “Destination Wedding” at a (product placement) Bahamas resort, with that great grandniece Tiffany (Diamond White) rushing into marriage with a model-pretty cornrowed creep named Zavier (Xavier Smalls).

He rubs her divorced dad (Perry as Atlanta DA Brian) the wrong way. You KNOW great grandma Madea and granddad Joe (Perry and Perry) are going to get their backs up about the hastily arranged wedding (by Tiffany’s sketchy mom, Debrah (Taja V. Simpson).

Zavier likes casually dropping the “n” word on his prospective in-laws.

“We don’t SAY n—a in THIS house, n—a!”

Madea’s got to fret about overseas travel and the prospect of a passport.

“I am ILLEGAL in 92 countries!”

Brian’s bright but indulged, childish 19 year old son (Jermaine Harris doing an Urkel homage) puts Joe in another “You need to beat the kid’s ass” for this, that and the other, otherwise, Brian’s just “a little bitch” of a parent.

The Bahamas trip has airport hijinks, flight gripes and on arrival, a chance for Madea to dig into the “real” reasons for this rapid coupling and Joe to hit the card tables in a “charge it to the room” spree.

There’s a lot less of Madea’s odd word-mangling and a bit less of her, frankly, in this latest iteration.

A few laughs turn up, but everything seems played with only the novelty of rageaholics Madea and Joe, and Brown, Bam and Cora reacting to the same nonsense of a thousand other wedding comedies, trials of travel and family fracus farces.

This stuff doesn’t write itself, but it does seem as if Perry’s put the whole enterprise on autopilot, and his supporting “family” can’t riff or improvise much that’s funny into the worn out formula. He may not be as ambitious as he once was, but Madea has long been a “safe” space for him renew his popularity when the melodramas, thrillers and more challenging stories he tries to tell don’t work or connect with an audience.

I dare say this won’t be the last “Madea” Netflix comedy. But what we’ve got here is a not-really-trying model for all the Madeas from here on out.

Rating: PG-13, violence (Madea style), drug jokes, sexual jokes and profanity

Cast: Tyler Perry, Cassi Davis, David Mann, Tamela J. Mann, Taja V. Simpson, Diamond White, Jermaine Harris and Xavier Smalls.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Tyler Perry. A Tyler Perry Studios release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:44

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About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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