Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection
Directed by: Tyler Perry
Cast: Tyler Perry, Eugene Levy, Denise Richards, Romeo Miller, Tom Arnold
Running Time: 1 hr 54 mins
Rating: PG-13
Release Date: June 29, 2012
PLOT: A father (Levy) and his family are put under witness protection at Madea's (Perry) house after he is unknowingly involved in a Ponzi charity scheme.
WHO'S IT FOR? If you like the character Madea, then you'll get what you want here.
OVERALL
Tyler Perry is a storyteller first, a mogul second, an actor third, and maybe somewhere down the list, a filmmaker fourteenth or fifteenth. This order of professional priorities is evident with the overall quality of any of his projects; his authorship is constructed of shabbily made narratives with cardboard characters, as glued together by laughable melodrama (which has made Good Deeds [2012], Why Did I Get Married Too? [2010] and For Colored Girls [2010] critically condemned, among others). Often working from his own original screenplays, which would be first drafts for many other writers, Perry remains a fiercely prolific force on his level, creating a surplus of storytelling about middle-aged African Americans for the mediums of television, film, and the stage, where Perry’s unrivaled enterprise was first conceived.
Through many stories, often featuring themes of forgiveness leading to redemption and usually dramatically steered by sharp turns more commonplace in soap operas than mainstream American films, one of Perry’s most successful contributions to American film culture has been the rambunctious character Madea, a senior African American woman that has Perry wearing stuffy flower dresses over a junky bodysuit, topping his head with a cheap gray wig, and completing the look with a sharp high pitched voice. Yet, despite Madea’s accessibility as a familiar archetype to a general mainstream audiences buttered by the previous transvestite slapstick of Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy, Madea has always run secondary to Perry’s stuffy sermonizing, often utilized to lure viewers unaware of the shallow spiritual waters they are about to tread (as with Madea Goes to Jail [2009], or I Can Do Bad All By Myself [2009], movies that could have certainly used more Madea). While Madea’s Witness Protection might be yet another cheaply assembled preaching product from the Tyler Perry Studios factory, this particular film stands out for being the first time that Perry allows the comedic freewheeling strength of Madea to ultimately drive the story.
In the film, a very twitchy Eugene Levy plays George Needleman, a CFO of an investment firm who was duped into a Ponzi scheme that laundered money from the mob to fake charities. One of the investment funds lost in the scheme belongs to former thug Jake (Romeo Miller), who initially invested funds to save his father's (John Amos) church, and is left to his own naïve devices to get the money back.
While the company is under investigation by friendly prosecutor Brian (Tyler Perry), George and his wife Kate (Denise Richards), son Howie (Devan Leos), daughter Cindy (Danielle Campbell), and mother Barbara (Doris Roberts) are put into a witness protection program. With the involved mob considered a serious threat to the Needlemans (despite their bare appearance in the story), Brian comes up with the idea that they will stay at his aunt Madea’s place under witness protection, where his father Joe also lives. This begins a collection of events that lead to wisdom imparted on the family by Madea and Joe as they all live together, with the uptight family learning to cherish the time they spend with each other, without the distraction of work (as with George) or technology (as with Howie and Cindy). There is also a running joke in the movie that Barbara and conceived George years ago when they coincidentally met 52 years prior).
George and Brian find a break in the case when the fake name of “Precious Jackson” is revealed to be that of a codename for a nonexistent account holder. In a move that is inspired by something Whoopi Goldberg did in Ghost (1990), Madea is secretly enlisted by George to pretend that she is Precious Jackson, so that she can travel to New York City and transfer the remaining funds back to the real clients (which includes Jake’s church money).
Perry is a storyteller who knows the value of serving his niche; and if Perry's most faithful demographic is indeed middle-aged, churchgoing African American women, then Madea is their id; a high-tempered, Bible-illiterate sinner with wild back stories involving episodes of “hookin', strippin’, robbin’” in her younger life. And yet, she can still be embraced by her audience for her foundational advocacy for second chances, especially when it comes to young men and women.
Whether Perry's machine gun improvising hits comedic targets or not, this character is still his most inspired aspect of his films, making the cheap but heavy drama surrounding Madea's shenanigans dead weight by comparison. In the case of Madea's Witness Protection, it is a relief that Perry resolves his preaching at the end of the second act, and concedes the third act to be mindless, more propelled by the spirit of Perry's desire to improvise as much as possible than an interest in preaching from his own moral compass. Often presenting this woman living in “the dark ages” at odds with technology (“Madea vs. The TSA”) or highbrow vacationing (“Madea vs. Fancy Hotels”), Perry allows Madea's Witness Protection to be a more direct serving of what outsiders may expect from a title (and the film’s advertising, which suggests Madea might be under witness protection herself). Such servings may be high in fat, but the occasional laugh keeps them from being regrettable.
Acting is still a challenge for Perry himself, despite his stubbornness in playing three roles in the film, and writing loose scenes for himself in which all three of his characters interact with one another at the same time (with Joe and Madea squawking at each other). When he is not hiding behind old age makeup, an exaggerated impersonation and saucy elderly attitude (either for Madea or Joe), his plain face character Brian is completely barren of charisma, his own perfection mistaken for lifelessness.
Perry certainly lacks a gauge for what make a rich performance in others, and leaves the work up to his actors, whether they care to make anything of their job or not (Loretta Devine stepped up to the challenge with a memorable turn in For Colored Girls). With such breezy direction, performances become unhinged - Levy’s fidgety neuroses are overloaded until the Best in Show actor’s genuineness is unrecognizable, and the adolescent acting of Campbell and Miller comes at the quality of an unprepared audition, rushing past the concept of emotional control. Interactions between characters are often be filled with unintentional beats, with actors putting the bare organization of the script on embarrassing display.
With Madea’s Witness Protection, Perry demonstrates a little improvement visually from his past films, but it is not by much. For example, he does not dare toy with glaring negative space as he did with Good Deeds, an aesthetic choice that made dull scenes even more aesthetically lifeless (both films use cinematographer Alexander Gruszynski). Yet at the same time, this film does reinforce his sloppy attitude towards editing, with shots lingering too long between his different characters, a breaking of the fourth wall that constantly reminds the audience of who is behind the makeup; frequent Perry editor Maysie Hoy is so in tune with the mogul’s filmmaking laziness that she may as well be another Perry personality.
While Madea presents Perry’s flailing strength at improvising, the structure that Perry’s script sets for himself is no more concrete than his previous work, with cheaply constructed characters speaking flat dialogue that delivers exposition with the force of a 2X4, achieving the general impression such writing would be more at home in PSAs than Hollywood drama. The story itself is nothing significant, taking viewers from a post-Recession tale of betrayal to Madea’s church to a light third act. While Perry has been accused in the past of constructing characters from ugly stereotypes, it becomes all the more likely, especially with the depthless characters and the events they face in this story, that Perry simply has little imagination.
Unlike his other efforts, Madea’s Witness Protection doesn’t pretend for too long that it is anything more than the same biannual sermon, repackaging the same themes as previous. As a filmmaker continually bumbling through cinematography, editing, writing, and most certainly directing, Perry still has a lot of work to do should he ever want to be taken seriously as a filmmaker, and not just a multi-millioniare. Amongst a critically challenging filmography, Madea’s Witness Protection can be seen as a winking indication of Perry’s strongest suit, embodying Madea - he certainly knows the profit of a good disguise.
FINAL SCORE: 4/10