Not that everyone loves Madea by any means. Its sequels have fared little better, but the franchise has made nearly half a billion dollars.
ALL OF TYLER PERRY MOVIES AND PLAYS MOVIE
To many, Madea movies are virtually unwatchable: her 2005 movie debut, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 16%.
In the movies, her painfully broad slapstick is often mixed in with soapy family melodrama dealing with themes of domestic violence, religious salvation and conservative family values (Perry is a Christian). She speaks in exaggerated “Ebonics”, shuns political correctness, commits crimes and often asserts her ol’-time values with the aid of firearms. Her pantomime-dame antics make Eddie Murphy’s Nutty Professor II: The Klumps look Shakespearean. Few will mourn her passing but it’s the end of some kind of era.įor the uninitiated, which includes most non-African Americans, Madea is a bewildering proposition, her enduring popularity even more so.
After nearly 20 years, 10 stage plays, 10 movies, numerous cameos and even a straight-to-DVD animation, Perry announced he is retiring the Madea character after next year’s A Madea Family Funeral. “Time for me to bury that old broad, man.” Usually that’s no way to talk about a septuagenarian great-grandmother, but Perry is referring to his own fat-suited alter ego, and many would agree with him. “I ’m sick of that old bitch,” Tyler Perry recently said of Mabel “ Madea” Simmons.