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Comedy And Melodrama Clash In 'Madea Goes To Jail'

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By NEIL POND American Profile

The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 5, 2009

Comedian Tyler Perry trots out his favorite character for "Madea Goes to Jail," his latest cinematic souffle of bawdy comedy and moralizing melodrama.

Madea - whom Perry plays in drag, mostly in a mumu - is a large, loud woman with anger-management issues. Perry has portrayed the blustery, brawling granny in three previous movies, and she's also cropped up on his successful TBS television series, "Tyler Perry's House of Payne."

After recurring run-ins with the law, including a parking-space altercation in which she picks up the other vehicle with a forklift, Madea is sent to the big house by an exasperated judge (TV adjudicator Judge Mathas - don't ask how or why) who can't understand why she hasn't been locked up long ago.

Despite the title, Madea's trip to prison isn't the movie's primary focus, which instead revolves around a young assistant district attorney and his engagement to a co-worker.

The signs that their trip down the aisle is headed for trouble are planted early - and obviously - in the movie, and, sure enough, lead exactly where you expect.

Fans of TV's "The Cosby Show" will probably not know quite how to process the sight of Keshia Knight Pulliam, best remembered from her role as that show's pint-sized moppet Rudy Huxtable, portraying a drug-addicted prostitute who comes between the lawyer and his fiance.

That the two storylines of the movie don't intersect, or even run parallel, is just one of the problems.

But Perry (who also wrote and directed, and plays two additional roles) barges ahead anyway, crosscut-sawing back and forth between rip-snortin' silly and heavy-handed serious.

There are also numerous plot holes, script shortcomings, bargain-basement production standards, wall-to-wall stereotypes and a cameo by Dr. Phil that runs out of ha-ha steam long before it wheezes to a conclusion.

The audience at the screening I attended was obviously made up of a lot of Tyler Perry enthusiasts, and they giggled at Madea's every grandstanding mannerism, Southern-fried euphemism and law-flauntin' blowup.

Perry clearly knows what his fans like, and he gives it to them - by the shovelful.

But for those not so tuned to his talents, "Madea Goes to Jail" is two excruciating hours of hard time.

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