Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection

By RAFER GUZMAN
McCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE

I know time is money on a movie set, but you’d think Tyler Perry could spend a day or two rehearsing. How much could it cost to block out a scene, nail down dialogue and figure out the best spot for the camera?

Then again, why bother? Rudimentary filmmaking and wobbly acting have never kept Perry’s films from hitting the upper reaches of the box office and probably won’t stop his latest, “Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection.”

Perry makes ‘em fast, cheap and profitable. That’s great if you’re his studio, Lionsgate, but pretty exasperating if you’re sitting in the audience.

My best hope for “Witness Protection” was Eugene Levy, a veteran comedic actor known to younger viewers as the oversharing dad in the “American Pie” movies.

Levy plays George Needleman, a clueless CFO with a trophy wife (Denise Richards) and two dysfunctional kids (Danielle Campbell and Devan Leos), who discovers his financial firm is a giant Ponzi scheme.

That’s the newsy hook; the ancient plot involves a mob family (never seen) that forces the Needlemans to seek shelter with the volatile granny Madea (Perry).

<1--nextpage-->
Perry triples as strait-laced Atlanta lawman Brian Simmons and his low-life father, Joe, but he’s always at his best in Madea’s drag, becoming sharper, funnier and looser. (Madea’s neighborhood is so black, “we don’t even have white cats.”) I half-expected Levy to elevate Perry’s game a little, but their styles never mesh. Perry riffs loudly while Levy, as the nervous nebbish, just reacts.

As always, Perry targets his audience with feel-good subplots about a struggling church (John Amos plays Pastor Nelson) and a wayward kid (Romeo Miller), but this is sloppy stuff, even by Perry’s standards.

Check out movie times

MOVIE REVIEW
Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection
*
Stars: Tyler Perry, Eugene Levy, Denise Richards, Danielle Campbell, John Amos
Director: Tyler Perry
Rating: PG-13 for some crude sexual remarks and brief drug references
Running time: 114 minutes