Madea’s Family Reunion (2006)

Having finally watched Tyler Perry’s “Madea’s Family Reunion,” I’m left uncomfortably squirmy, as if I’ve read a popular novel, and just can’t grasp it. Correction: I grasp it alright, and I just want to forget it.

“Madea” follows a large African-American family from Atlanta, each person undergoing a challenge of some sort. I was fully game. But Perry – writer, director, producer and multi-star – has left me stone cold. He jumps from a scene where a rich banker (Blair Underwood) beats the shit out of his fiancée (Rochelle Ayets) to a hap-hap-happy scene with Perry himself in cheap granny drag, hamming it up as the matriarch Madea. It’s an ugly, mocking performance of women, and I could barely stomach this toxic mix of drama and comedy – I take the beating of women a bit more serious, I suppose. Perry? Hell if I know.

Perry then proceeds to fumble his way to a condescending grade-school church sermon, and then lands at a gaudy wedding that makes “The Phantom of the Opera” seem mundane. The acting is good, I adore Lynn Whitfield when she’s wicked, and Cicely Tyson and Maya Angelou are glorious angels on Earth. But, thanks, I’ll skip the next cook out with Madea. C-