The common qualities of a Christmas production include lessons about generosity and kindness, a retelling of the manger story, or even a few carols (secular or not). Look at all the great Christmas stories and you’ll find elements of the Christmas season tastefully woven into a larger story that has merit unto itself. When Tyler Perry writes a play about Christmas, the best elements of holiday productions go down the drain leaving some of the most inane qualities that make sitting through it all so hard to take: two-dimensional characters reciting the typical selfish and conceited sentiments, Madea saying one stupid thing after another, and comedy that falls flat on its face only to be rewarded by a far too forgiving audience. A Madea Christmas: The Play has all of these mind-numbing elements piled on to a simple opposites collide comedy and will make you long for the innocence of a horrible high school production, because at least then you know they’re not being paid for making you cringe at bad dialogue and music.
Let’s list the clichés of A Madea Christmas: The Play as they appear in the first 10 minutes (the list for the whole film would go on for pages), and let’s do it only within the scope of the film’s “villain”, the main character’s mother. Perry started with the basic frame of Ebenezer Scrooge and then added as many superficial, materialistic qualities he could think of: she forbids her head servant from going home for Christmas, values status and appearance over other people, wants her daughter to marry for money, etc. It could be argued that creating a character like that, one concerned with class instead of character, and then having her name her children China and Japan based on where they were conceived is a masterstroke of satire, revealing her hypocrisy. Yet that’s not how it’s played and certainly not how it comes across. Tyler Perry wrote and directed A Madea Christmas the same way he does all his material: with the cheapest joke and most heavy-handed spiritual message in mind.
Once again he insults his supposed target niche with material far beneath par for what anyone should expect when they purchase a DVD or Blu-ray. The world would be a better place and the holiday season a brighter time if A Madea Christmas had been left to wallow in obscurity in the Atlanta theater where it was filmed. Good riddance.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
A blooper reel and behind-the-scenes look at the play’s filming are the two basic extras, and then something akin to a series of interviews with the cast makes up the final featurette.
"A Madea Christmas" is on sale November 22, 2011 and is rated PG13. Comedy. Written and directed by Tyler Perry. Starring Cassi Davis, Tyler Perry, Zuri Craig.
