Movie Review - A Madea Family Funeral

It has to be said that 2019 will be seen as the year where a lot of film and TV franchises came to an end. Obviously, there's the finales to Game of Thrones and The Big Bang Theory. There's Avengers: Endgame, which isn't technically the end of that franchise but a kind of end to it. This year could also be seen as the end to the film series How To Train Your Dragon and to M. Night Shyamlan's Unbreakable series. In December, we're also going to get Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which is going to be allegedly the end of movies involving characters with the last name of Skywalker. Flying very below the radar is this film, which has been touted as the end of movies involving the character with the first name of Madea, as embodied by actor-writer-producer-director Tyler Perry.

It's fitting that the final movie in this franchise involves a funeral, but it's not the funeral of the titular character. No, Madea isn't the one who's dying, but that might have been more interesting. This movie is about Madea planning a funeral for someone else. Through that, Perry can spoof and satirize the idea and what occurs at funerals for and by African-Americans. Perry has said in interviews that despite being a sad and solemn event, he's observed things that are hilarious and rife for spoofing at funerals for black people. Throughout this film, it's obvious what those things are. His character of Madea essentially calls them out. Unfortunately, the way in which Madea calls them out is endemic to the problem with this film's construction and the construction of his last two Madea films in particular, as well as a lot of the other Madea films.

Perry stars as Madea, a gun-toting, foul-mouth, raunchy, tell-it-like-it-is, Southern, non-educated but street-smart, aggressive and in-your-face grandma. However, Perry also plays two other characters. One is Joe, another foul-mouth, raunchy, tell-it-like-it-is, Southern, non-educated but street-smart, aggressive and in-your-face grandparent-type. The other is Brian, a regular guy who works as a lawyer and who doesn't require Perry getting into tons of makeup, prosthetic wear or crazy costumes.

With this film, Perry adds another character for himself to play on screen and in the same scenes as the others. This new character is Heathrow, the brother to Madea. Heathrow is another foul-mouth, raunchy, tell-it-like-it-is, Southern, non-educated but street-smart, aggressive and in-your-face grandparent-type. So, in a lot of the scenes, if not more than half of the scenes, Perry is playing three characters who are essentially the same. Joe and Heathrow are by far the most identical. The only difference is that Heathrow is in a wheelchair, so Perry essentially gets to make jokes about being disabled. As always with Hollywood productions, it's a shame that Perry couldn't employ an actual disabled actor.

Cassi Davis plays Aunt Bam, another character that's similar to Madea but maybe not as aggressive. Patrice Lovely plays Hattie Mae, another character that's similar to Madea but maybe not as smart. They're only slightly different from Madea, so that she can call them out for even more idiotic things that they say, but they only underscore a lot of the redundancies inherent in Perry's film series.

How Perry wields these characters is extremely redundant. Every scene aside from a handful involves all of these older characters, Madea, Joe, Aunt Bam, Hattie and now Heathrow sitting around and being their foul-mouth, raunchy, tell-it-like-it-is, Southern, non-educated but street-smart, aggressive and in-your-face selves. They can be funny in brief drips, but their scenes constitute more than half this film. Plus, their scenes go on for too long. One scene involved them sitting around for nearly ten minutes. The redundancy and the repetition just becomes like a jackhammer or nails on the chalkboard. It's too much.

It's similar to what Perry was doing in his two previous films, Boo! A Madea Halloween (2016) and Boo 2! A Madea Halloween (2017). The older characters of Madea, Joe, Aunt Bam and Hattie would eat up so much of the run-time with their redundancy and repetition that it would crowd out whatever plot or other characters Perry was employing. He had a cast of younger characters in those two previous films that were for the most part wasted or not given enough time to shine. It's the same here. It would be one thing if they were really spoofing or satirizing something with an interesting point-of-view, but even when Perry does have an interesting point-of-view, as he does in a scene satirizing the Black Lives Matter issue, he hammers it too long to where it's just annoying and grating.

Courtney Burrell (who is a graduate of Dover High School and Delaware State University) co-stars as AJ, a young man who doesn't live in Georgia but he's there visiting his parents who are having an anniversary party. We don't learn much more of who he is and what he does, except that he is having an affair with his brother's fiancée.

Rome Flynn (The Bold and the Beautiful and How To Get Away With Murder) also co-stars as Jessie, the younger brother to AJ. Jessie's fiancée is cheating on him with AJ, but Jessie doesn't know it. Again, we don't learn much more of who he is and what he does or what his relationship with his brother has really been up to this point. The performances between Flynn and Burrell suggest a good brotherly bond, but anything more is steamrolled by the numerous scenes with them as basically background actors to Perry's scenes with himself playing three or four characters.

Aeriél Miranda (Pretty Little Liars) plays Gia, the fiancée to Jessie who cheats on him with his brother. She's the one in the middle of these two brothers and despite her guilt about the situation, we also get practically nothing more of who she is and what she does. She doesn't even get a scene where she explains why she cheated or what's going on in her head. She too becomes a background actor to Perry's scenes with himself playing three or four characters. She along with all the other young actors and actresses for the most part stand around Madea and the older characters who dominate the screen, riffing and improvising nonsense.

Jen Harper (Greenleaf and Saints & Sinners) plays Vianne, the mother to AJ and Jessie. It's her husband who dies, which prompts Madea to plan his funeral, becoming the backbone or narrative thrust of this film. Harper is the one actress who really gets a moment to shine and show or rather tell us who she is and what her life has been up to this point. It's a powerful monologue that is delivered extremely well. It demonstrates Perry's strength as a playwright, which is probably his greatest strength.

His weakest strength is probably directing. The way Perry stages every scene is like he's staging a live play with basic coverage, which works fine for his TV shows like The Have and the Have Nots. It becomes clunky and awkward here. It's not just that his camera placement doesn't represent any creativity or ingenuity. It's again who the camera favors. For example, there is a scene where Vianne's husband dies. Apparently, he dies as a result of a BDSM moment in a hotel room, but the way Perry shoots this scene favors the older characters like Madea and Joe. He doesn't actually show us the body of Vianne's husband.

The other characters describe what they see but Perry never shows us the body. He certainly isn't a prude in what his characters say but to be a prude and not depict what actually happened to Vianne's husband felt cowardly. It wasn't the act of a confident filmmaker. The movie in some of its themes outside the funeral stuff feels like a watered-down version of Perry's Why Did I Get Married? (2007) but again because Perry's older characters dominate, the plot involving the young, married couples feel like filler or padding. It doesn't feel vital or integral. Some of the young characters could have even been lost and it wouldn't have mattered to the movie. David Otunga (WWE Raw) is in this movie, but there's no explanation as to why. He could easily have been taken out and it wouldn't have mattered to this movie.

Rated PG-13 for crude sexual humor, language and drug references.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 49 mins.

Available on DVD and VOD.