Parents' Guide to Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas

Overall, this holiday installment (which includes, no lie, digital Christmas present wipes in between scenes) is one of Perry's worst executed Madea movies. But let's start with the good: Najimy and Larry the Cable Guy do elicit laughs as the surprisingly open-minded "country folks" who love the beautiful Lacey and can see why she's a good match for their handsome college-educated son. They might look like bigots, Perry is saying, but they're the progressive ones when it comes to the interracial relationship. Despite changing things up by having the black parent be the prejudiced one (please see Something New for a much better example of this twist on the Guess Who's Coming to Dinner trope), the issue is handled with heavy handed stereotypes and cliches. And it also makes Lacey infinitely less likable as a character, because what kind of person forces their loving, ridiculously handsome husband and his loving parents to pretend they're a paid employee and his poor parents?

Seeing Larry the Cable Guy go joke-for-joke with Tyler Perry is novel for a couple of moment, but really he and Najimy are the only ones who are consistently funny, since poor Madea has to spend most of the movie compensating for or chastising her killjoy of a niece Eileen, who is not only racist but also classist and insensitive and downright cruel. The only moment that redeems her is late in Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas. There's no real joy and laughter for most of it, and at the end everything and everyone is magically happy.