If Madea's Family Reunion proves anything it's that I should learn not to speak so soon. Just yesterday I called Running Scared the most uncomfortable, unsettling, and just plain nasty filmgoing experiences I'd had in a long time. And it was before today when I saw Madea's Family Reunion, a complete and absolute train wreck of a film that plays like a collision between the sappiest soap opera you've ever laid eyes on and Big Momma's House. This is a lamebrained, schizophrenic mess that wants us to suffer through its heroine's pain of being physically abused by her husband one minute, and then just seconds later devotes an entire scene to an old man farting very loudly numerous times. I felt like I was switching back and forth between two TV channels, and was forced to go between an unfunny and crude family comedy, and a family melodrama so over the top that the serious moments generated more laughs out of me than the comedic ones. I haven't hated a movie this much since Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.

Having never seen last year's surprise hit, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, this was my first (and most likely last) introduction to the world of writer-director Tyler Perry. For those of you who don't know, Mr. Perry initially found fame writing a series of plays centered around a large black woman named Madea whom he plays in a fat suit and an unconvincing wig. I'm sure the effect works better on stage, because in this movie with Perry dressed in drag and surrounded by hundreds of real old women, he looks so out of place it's not even funny. Maybe it'd help if Madea herself was a likeable character, but she came across to me as an abusive, obnoxious felon in the disguise of a sweet old grandmother. Madea is just a plain disturbing character, as her advice to others usually resorts to "kick their ass" or "kill them". The audience I saw this movie with was in hysterics, and couldn't seem to get enough. I was disgusted, and fail to see how anyone can view such a hateful and desperate character as being positive.

The film's plot mostly centers around two sisters - Vanessa (Lisa Arrindell Anderson) and Lisa (Rochelle Aytes). The two women have had a hard existence from the beginning, thanks to their evil gold-digging mother (Lynn Whitfield) who has made their lives a living hell in different ways. The mother looks down on Vanessa, who is poor and a single mother, and has started to fall in love with a kindly bus driver (Boris Kodjoe). As for Lisa, she has all of her mother's attention, because she is set to be married to a wealthy black man named Carlos (Blair Underwood). Problem is, Carlos frequently abuses Lisa physically, going so far as to literally threaten to throw her off the balcony of their apartment if she ever tries to leave him. Lisa's too scared to tell anyone the truth, and the mother wants Carlos' money, so she keeps on trying to find excuses to keep the two together, even though she knows her daughter's life is in danger. Added to the plot is Madea trying to cope with raising a troubled preteen girl that she's been placed into care of (usually through physical abuse and ridicule), and an upcoming family reunion where everyone gathers together and listens to Cicely Tyson and Maya Angelou recite poetry about how black people should love each other. And yes, the scene is just as awkward and out of the blue as it sounds, but not as awkward as the final wedding scene that features black women hanging from the ceilings playing harps, and half-naked black men dressed as angels.

Madea's Family Reunion is a movie so misguided it is almost a textbook example of how not to make a good movie. The dramatic scenes are so broad, the acting so over the top, and the dialogue so "scripted" and fake that I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing and listening to. Consider the scene where Lisa and Vanessa ask Madea what they should do about Lisa's abusive fiancee. Madea's advice? Throw a pot of hot grits in his face, then bash him in the head with a frying pan. Only in the world's worst sitcom would someone actually make such a suggestion. It gets even worse when Lisa actually does this to Carlos near the end of the film. The scene is supposed to make us cheer, but it is shot all wrong. It is a moment of intense hatred and evil, not payback. The look on Lisa's face as she hits her fiance in the head with a frying pan is a look of murder and psychotic rage. And then she keeps on hitting him over and over again, and the scene just becomes more and more ugly and awkward. When the audience started cracking up and cheering with each blow, I wanted to stand up and scream "what the hell is wrong with you people"? Even more disturbing is that the film leaves it at that. After viciously cracking her fiance's head open, she goes off to the local church and celebrates with her family, and they all laugh and dance and sing. The message of this moment seems to be if someone is violent to you, be even more violent, and all will be forgiven. No punishment, no police, just a lifeless body lying on the kitchen floor while our heroine goes off and celebrates.

Indeed, the entire moral standing of the movie is so screwed up that I don't think even Tyler Perry himself could explain it. Although he spends most of the film looking down at violence, he seems to think it's okay as long as it's a means for revenge or for raising young children. Take the very disturbing subplot of Madea getting foster care of a troubled preteen girl early in the film. The girl is mouthy and rude to her. Madea's advice? Climb into the back seat of the car and punch her, or in a later scene, slap her repeatedly with a belt. What makes it so disturbing is that whenever we see the girl from then on, she's a perfect lady and suddenly is doing good in school and has dreams of being a lawyer. No single explanation is given for this girl's sudden and drastic change from mouthy brat to perfect angel who goes to church every Sunday. The only conclusion I could draw is that she is behaving out of fear of what Madea will do to her if she acts up. The little girl is all but forgotten for most of the film anyway, so I have no idea why she's even in the movie in the first place. The movie seems to want to take multiple stances on its issues. It can't decide if violence is bad or if it's comical. Abuse is abuse I say, and Madea deserves to have her head bashed in with a frying pan just as much as the evil Carlos does.

Madea's Family Reunion fails in just about every way imaginable. Some scenes are about as easy to swallow as having an ocean liner shoved down your throat (like the opening scene where a guy somehow surprises his girlfriend with rose petals leading to a filled bath and a small orchestra sitting by the tub without her knowing), while others are just plain ludicrous, such as the scene where Carlos and the sisters' evil mother are plotting and say their dialogue with such evil glee that you're surprised they don't chew a hole right through the scenery. All the dramatic moments are played so broad that I quite literally could not stop laughing at some of them, such as the out of the blue poetry session during the reunion scene. The comedic scenes, on the other hand, come across more as being just plain wrong. Take the scene where a small group of dirty old men spot a sexy teenage girl dressed in a revealing outfit, and have her reach far into a cooler for a drink so they can film the act with a video camera, and make leering faces at her behind her back. That's not funny, that's just plain creepy. There's not one single second of Madea's Family Reunion that works the way that Tyler Perry intends it to. Even if the film's title character was played by a real woman instead of a guy in unconvincing drag, this movie still would not work in any way.

I am positively mystified by the audience's reaction to this film who seemed to be eating this stuff up. Not one single second is honest, true, or even entertaining in the slightest. It is a vile, miscalculated, ugly little movie that made me feel worse as it went along. Madea obviously tries to lift our spirits, but I was too busy wondering how any movie could possibly be this bad. I don't know, maybe something got lost in the transition from the stage to the screen. I can't see how, though. For all its messages of peace and love, this movie is a surprisingly hateful and angry little piece of bitterness. Apparently there's more Madea movies on the way, as Lion's Gate Films gave Perry a 7-film deal after Diary became a surprise hit. If the promise of more Madea doesn't make you scared to set foot inside a theater, nothing will.

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