THE REEL: A Madea Family Funeral

A Madea Family Funeral is a movie about a Madea family reunion to celebrate the wedding anniversary of Vianne (Jen Harper) and Anthony (Derek Morgan). PHOTO| YOUTUBE

What you need to know:

  • The scene in the clip takes place at a hospital’s waiting room, where an affluent-looking lady asks “Where was he?”.
  • An old lady starts, “At the ho…” before she gets smacked in the face. The smacker then yells, “Shut up!”

I’m not a fan of the Madea movies. Let me just say that off the bat. The only other Madea “film” I’ve ever watched was the taping of one of the Madea plays; I can’t really recall the title.

The reason I picked out this movie to watch, I actually just watched it this week, is because I stumbled upon a clip of the movie on social media – which many of you might have caught – titled “This sh*t got me weak”.

The scene in the clip takes place at a hospital’s waiting room, where an affluent-looking lady asks “Where was he?”. An old lady starts, “At the ho…” before she gets smacked in the face. The smacker then yells, “Shut up!” With her glasses on crooked from the smack, the old lady turns to the smacker and says, “Damn it, Ma, I’m gonna f*** you up!”

And with that, I was sold into trying to find out what Madea movie would have the audacity to throw out profanity of this magnitude; last time I left it, this was a Christian movie.

A Madea Family Funeral is a movie about a Madea family reunion to celebrate the wedding anniversary of Vianne (Jen Harper) and Anthony (Derek Morgan).

ALL SET FOR CELEBRATION

All is set for the celebration, as relatives fly and drive in to commune, and then something goes horribly wrong. Anthony is taken to the hospital just hours to the dinner event due to a heart attack.

His family wants to find out how his heart attack came on because he had left his house seemingly okay.

That is where the scene I described above comes in. He was up to no good, but Madea doen’t feel like it’s in her friends’ place to divulge that kind of information to Anthony’s family.

She doesn’t want to be hated for being the bearer of bad news. Anthony is pronounced dead soon afterwards and Madea is put in charge of the funeral and the arrangements.

Now, they have to manoeuvre their way around Vianne and her children without telling them too much details of the dirt Anthony was doing when he fell ill.

The movie is not exactly exciting. Let me just get that out of the way. It’s a mix of a lot of stand-up comedy with the Black-relationships-family-stories that come with almost all African-American films.

It’s loud-talking, neck-cranking, head-swinging, exaggerated laughters that all Madea films come with. The script is “aight”, but I realised that the hospital scene was the only part of the movie I really enjoyed. Simply because it was too outrageous and really amusing.

In truth, I’ve rewatched that scene some few tens of times.

There are other scenes and characters that are outrageous, but this one didn’t seem over the top or forced like those.

I don’t know why Madea has to make up so many words that probably don’t exist. My other peeve with Tyler Perry’s depiction of Madea is how he lets slide scenes where she doesn’t even complete sentences or words and you have to go on guessing what they meant.

I know Madea is his baby and it’s a fun way for him to still incorporate the acts that he started from the bottom with, but some more effort into making it something much more would be great.

I get it, it’s definitely been working or else he wouldn’t be spending time, energy and money into making more of these. With that said, you either love the franchise or you don’t. It’s a movie that’s out there any way, so you can still check it out.