With Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family, my Perry education is now complete. I have stoically observed his previous Madea Simmons films in the lonesome silence of my own apartment. Now I go to the theaters, and get a much fuller sense of the Cult of Perry, seeing appreciative audience reaction as an actual, living and breathing phenomenon, not just a hypothetical event.
And not just any theater! Southside Chicago, where I was the one and only white person in attendance, excepting this one very confused looking elderly man. Otherwise, that statistic that Perry’s audience is 65% middle-aged black women, that held up very true. And having browsed the YouTubes, having seen the sort of raucous hooting and hollering that accompanies every moment of Perry’s Chitlin’ Circuit live Madea performances (oh yes, Big Happy Family is derived from a stage play just like most of the rest), I can attest that the cinematic experience is somewhat similar. It’s not as extreme, as sans live actors there’s no one to benefit from a packed-to-the-gills stadium shouting advice and stomping their feet and my god, but this is easily the most excitable, emotionally-driven movie audience I’ve ever been in attendance with, and that includes gung-ho midnight screenings for things like Grindhouse.
Given all that, it’s hard for me to say if Big Happy Family is indeed Tyler Perry’s funniest Madea movie, or if I’m simply seeing laughter in moments where personally I wouldn’t. It’s kind of telling, to see the loutish and loud behavior of Perry’s fat-suited, cross-dressing anti-church-lady Mammy archetype Madea embraced so wholeheartedly. Even a centuries-old “ham isn’t pig” joke goes over like gangbusters, as though it were just being discovered. Likely that gag, like most of the rest, are not new to anyone, but viewers love the familiarity of it all. It’s a familiarity I trust comes from a certain black generational experience, but it’s become my familiarity as well, simply through the formulaic repetition of the Tyler Perry enterprise.
So as I’ve focused, the viewing audience is what made Madea’s Big Happy Family, which I’m sure I wouldn’t have too much to say about on its own. It’s a Tyler Perry joint, we know what and we’re getting into now in 2011. A heady, tone-deaf mixture of comedy and melodrama, interspersed with scant musical numbers (not nearly as many as in I Can Do Bad All By Myself, lamentably), all dwelling upon the black experience in Georgia. There will be laughter and tears, each as hyper-intensified as the other, with emotion so strong my cracker ass didn’t even know it existed. And Madea will be there, likely with nary anything to do with the greater one-off melodramata, except for a stern plot-resolving talk near the end.
All that applies to Big Happy Family, which surprisingly excises a major part of the Perry production formula: There is no love triangle surrounding a professional black woman, whose personal quest for self-betterment is couched in the dramatics of choosing the obvious hero over the obvious villain. There’s none of that here, making the story purely familiar. Perhaps that’s why this film seems more comedic, more ramshackle than some of Perry’s other work. Boy if it didn’t work on the clientele! So even when the heartstrings oppressively pop up on the soundtrack to signal to a still-guffawing theater that it’s time to weep, everything is phrased in a far more conscious version of the “coonery buffoonery” Spike Lee laments so.
Central in Big Happy Family is Shirley (Loretta Devine), mater familias to the intended “big happy family” – and in celebration of dramatic irony, a more dysfunctional brood I cannot fathom. Every family member is a window into a new subplot of hardship and intrapersonal feuding. Daughter Tammy (Natalie Desselle-Reid) is enraged at her husband Harold (Rodney Perry – evidently no relation) – and it’s never clear exactly why.
Tammy’s sister Kimberly (Shannon Kane, of “All My Children,” to indicate on what level these films function), having become wealthy and attractive, is the designated evil one, and is enraged at her entire family – and it’s never clear exactly why. Kimberly’s also married to the Old Spice guy, which is endlessly amusing.
Their little brother Byron (Shad “[Lil’] Bow Wow” Moss – yes, the rapper) is the prototypical Perry “good man,” in that he represents all the virtues of Jesus-loving, straight-laced goodness, which never jibes with his recent felonious past – and it’s never clear exactly why. We’re talkin’ debates on whether he’s the baby-daddy, on who’s the baby-momma, maybe even uncertainty on who the baby-baby is.
But the focus remains upon momma Shirley, who’s just learned she has inoperable cancer, and has around a month to live. She too represents Perry’s strangely distinct conception of selfless, saintly goodness, so much so that her conflict is she cannot tell her family she has cancer. This drives the story. It’s not that Shirley doesn’t want to, but she wants to tell everyone at once – and her children are all prone to hyper-emotional outbursts at the drop of a hat. Thus the movie is structured like a farce, without that element ever being a joke. Shirley struggles to engineer family dinners, only for some new melodrama to interrupt her every time she’s about to drop the cancer bomb. Phrased that way, it sounds like Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, though I’m surely the only audience member who thought that. It’s kind of a weird conceit to center a drama around, but it’s really a framing device for the panoply of interchangeable dilemmas Perry’s cooked up for us this time.
Shirley’s family is plenty buffoonish on the face of it – I mean both intentionally (nearly every cast member accomplishes some laughs, at least in the audience’s opinion), and unintentionally (any attempt at civil discourse is preempted with a “No, you don’t get to talk to me!” diatribe, hence the perpetual dramatic fuel). Some of the laughs are extremely aggravating – I’m thinking specifically of Byron’s baby-momma, who’s given to saying his name as follows [cough]: “Byrooooooooooo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oooooooooon!” (And that’s one of her shorter outbursts – Perry drops hints this woman might actually be retarded, to be blunt.)
To this, add Shirley’s confidant, Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis, Perry regular), an obese, aging pothead grandmother given to obscene, sassily unexpected outbursts. In essence, she’s the distilled moxie of reoccurring characters Madea and Joe, so much that once the opening scene is over, I figured this movie hardly needed Madea at all.
How wrong I was (naturally, for otherwise I wouldn’t be seeing this). Madea’s still around, though there’s little of her schtick we don’t see in other Big Happy Family members. Not that the audience minded; they still welcomed Madea’s repetitive antics with great joy, erupting into applause at every utterance of “Halleleryah, praise der Lort [sic]!” As is often the case, it seems there’s barely any reason, narratively, for Madea to be present. Bam could just as easily do as Madea does, could yell at the cast come climax as a panacea for their lifelong dysfunction, and provide relief in the interim. But Madea’s still there, because she’s a carrot to draw audiences in – and based upon last night’s screening, Perry’s comedy is appreciated far more than his dramatics, in that old “honey on the wormwood” notion of Lucretius’.
And it’s not just Madea (and Joe) who reappear. The central Meet the Browns figures return too (not pictured), for as much as I hoped they’d disappear if I simply didn’t type a lot about them. So we’re talkin’ Madea’s fifty-something daughter Cora (Tamela Mann) and her presumed “baby-daddy” Mr. (Leroy) Brown (David Mann – really Tamela’s husband, which direly confuses matters). Actually, the Madea family tree confuses me immensely, especially as it differs from the stage play tree (not live I’ve seen ‘em). Without even determining how Madea is connected to Shirley (reedit: she’s her niece), I spent so very much of Big Happy Family struggling to deduce how everyone was connected. It turns out that incest is avoided, but just barely! And then the plot conspires to confuse the issue re: baby-daddies towards the end, worsening everything.
Anyway, the Browns, like Bam, function as alternate Madeas in Madea’s absence. Though they’re normally in Madea’s presence. Actually, Brown’s tale of diabetes and medical anal intrusions (to inform you as to these films’ humor level) is meant to parallel Shirley’s cancer, like a classical comedic mirror. And people seem to like the Browns. This particular duo has always flummoxed me, especially Mr. Brown’s downright off-putting demeanor – I doubt I could affect a nasal speaking pitch that high, to say nothing of his eye-damaging wardrobe.
Actually, watching a Tyler Perry movie in the fullest technological powers of the local cinema, there are some unpleasantries to go along with the wonderful audience – many of whom must’ve seen the play, to go by their pre-quoting of lines. Nearly every single character (especially baby-momma – “Byroooooooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnn!”) has settled upon the most aurally unpleasant possible tone – and these people speak fast. Actually, speed of speech is a good indicator of how comic something seems to be. If watching this in silence at home, just picture raucous applause whenever someone, anyone, plows her words together like an auctioneer. I’ll admit it’s not my comedic cup of tea, and my ears were ringing for quite a while afterwards…Still, there is a reasonable amount of humor in here, even to my jaded self.
A few more observations, regarding Perry’s notion of morality. It’s been an ongoing fact that he outright abhors upper class blacks (excepting perhaps himself – cough!), that achieving wealth turns one shallow, vicious and soulless. This is old hat by now. Rather, I am astounded at Perry’s evident conclusions about morality re: body type. Something like 90% of Big Happy Family’s female cast is morbidly obese, and we’ talkin’ short, squat women that are literally 3.5 feet wide! This is downright unhealthy, especially when such a physique necessitates vertical waddling. To a one (and I’m counting Madea as one of the fat ladies, even though Perry plays “her”), these fat women are pure, good, gentle, exude all the righteous qualities.
On the other hand, you’ve got your thin, attractive, young black women – every one is evil! Sure, it’s visual shorthand, like slapping a black hat on your western bad guy, but come on. Stereotypically, Perry’s main audience is overweight black women, who want reassurance that their image is proper, and women diverging from them are hateful harpies. (Perry sure can temper his artistic impulses to deliver to an identified target audience.)
This doesn’t stop well-built, shirtless men from being good, in Perry’s eyes…that is, on the occasions when his strange reverse-misogyny doesn’t condemn the male gender altogether (no wonder the man cross-dresses). If there’s anything fat black women love more than hating on feminine thinness, it’s the chance to appreciatively ogle beefcake. Actually, there’s a whole lot of double standards in Perry’s oeuvre – Madea is faithless, yes the films are Christian; beating children is wrong, yet Madea is celebrated specifically for smacking them with hammers; if you’re toned, light-skinned and male, you’re OK, otherwise no; if you’re female, better be chunky; if you’re white, well, then you’re just SOL!
In retrospect, do I recommend Big Happy Family or not? Hard to say. I had a hell of a good time watching it, though I don’t think the movie is the reason. Seeing it with the Perry faithful sure was informative; I’m sore tempted to seek out a traveling Chitlin’ Circuit performance, and complete this arc. As for the movie itself…well…let’s let the movie have the final say. For I found myself thinking throughout, “Just who are these people, whose lives are so fraught with emotional incompetence?!” It’s a life I’ve never known, coming from many generations of emotionless stoics. My conclusion was that “Boy, these people sure seem like those bizarre caricatures on daytime talk TV.”
And lo and behold, Big Happy Family climaxes on “Maury!” This is perfectly believable, these characters appear simply that bereft of self-consciousness. And let that stand as the final word on Madea’s Big Happy Family. Former Perry works idolized “The View” and “Dr. Phil.” This one continues that midday hagiography. (“Oprah” is never outright addressed, though she basically commands the whole Perry empire.) Whatever your opinions are regarding Maury Povich, well…the same likely goes for Tyler Perry.
And here I leave off the Madea Simmons franchise, possibly still in utero. Tyler Perry is liable to return to his old battleaxe when the financial inspiration strikes him, though chances are just as likely he’ll forge on without her, to his arguable artistic improvement. The Madea plays are largely sapped now – the only one still unadapted is “Madea’s Class Reunion,” which was, as I understand, largely worked into Madea’s Family Reunion anyway. Though I could’ve said all this upon the conclusion of Perry’s previous Madea-centric adventure. “Madea’s Big Happy Family,” the play, didn’t come about until 2010. The character continues strong. If this cinematic Big Happy Family truly is Madea’s final outing, and there’s no indication it is, then it’s a good enough sendoff.
…But then, we still don’t know who every single baby-daddy is, so let’s count that as a cliffhanger…
Praise der Lort! And remember, dial 1-800-CHOKE-THAT-HO, for all your ho-choking needs.
RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)
• No. 2 Madea's Family Reunion (2006)
• No. 3 Meet the Browns (2008)
• No. 4 Madea Goes to Jail (2009)
• No. 5 I Can Do Bad All By Myself (2010)
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