I’ve watched Madea plays since 6th grade and have seen all the movies…I think. Each movie kind of falls in a certain place on the Tyler Perry spectrum. For example, The Family that Prays is a real serious drama. That movie is on one extreme. Then, there’s A Madea Homecoming. I felt it was more funny than serious. Every other movie seems to just coast somewhere between the two.
Can you guess what I’m going to say here? The movie is around an hour and 45 minutes, and we don’t need all of what we saw. We could have cut around 20 minutes. Aunt Cathy could go. The Red Lobster scene could go. Brown setting himself on fire, although extremely funny, could have been shorter.
According to some Facebook comments I read, some people said that this movie has the same plot as the Farewell play he did to send Madea off. I never got a chance to see that play so I’ll take y’all’s word for it. I liked the twists in this movie, the plot was solid, and I had a lot of laughs. But here’s what I didn’t like. As an alumni of Madea plays, I remember how Perry used to test his cast during the plays. There are some outtakes on some of those DVDs where he would go off script to see if his cast was paying attention. I felt a lot of that in this movie. Doesn’t feel like much was actually written. Seemed like a lot of the dialogue was just improv, which isn’t particularly a bad thing but it went on too long in some parts.
I do applaud Perry for giving me a twist I did not see coming! The only thing that could make this better is if I got more hints that made me wonder. The red herring in this situation worked because I was looking in a completely different direction until that cookout.
For her debut on Netflix, I enjoyed myself. Did I need the long Rosa Parks joke with the iPhone? No, no I did not. Was I entertained? Yes, yes I was. Did I need the end credits with Madea as Beyonce? I absolutely did not because I didn’t really get the connection with the film I just saw…but go off, sis.
A Madea Homecoming is now streaming on Netflix! More from Madea on Netflix will come and I want to see what else he does.
BLACK WATCH 