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{"id":2374,"date":"2006-02-24T11:33:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-24T11:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2006\/02\/madea-mediocrity-and-the-media\/"},"modified":"2006-02-24T11:33:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-24T11:33:00","slug":"madea-mediocrity-and-the-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2006\/02\/madea-mediocrity-and-the-media.html","title":{"rendered":"Madea, mediocrity, and the media"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a>Studio Briefing<\/a> reports today that there were no advance media screenings of Madea\u2019s Family Reunion<\/a><\/i> in the United States, presumably to avoid the critical drubbing that Diary of a Mad Black Woman<\/a><\/i> got when it opened last year. However, I happened to see the film four days ago with a bunch of other local critics, so I guess Canada is an exception \u2014 which is an interesting reversal of sorts, since Diary<\/i> didn\u2019t open or even press-screen in Canada until a few weeks after it opened at #1 in the States. (And this, despite the fact that the films are produced by Lionsgate, a Canadian company!)<\/span><\/p>\n

I have never seen Diary<\/i>, but I remember it got some pretty bad reviews, and if Madea\u2019s Family Reunion<\/i> is any indication of what that other film was like, then I can see why. The visuals are extremely blah (the film is little more than a series of close-ups on people\u2019s faces), the humour isn\u2019t all that<\/i> funny, the melodrama is too crassly soap-operatic (including a \u201cforgiveness\u201d element that is introduced with all the message-driven non-subtlety of a church-service skit, and I say this as one who has acted in a few), and there\u2019s some heavy speechifying at the family reunion itself (much of it directed at characters we have never seen before, and all of it spoken by characters we have never seen before, but the speakers are played by the likes of Maya Angelou and Cicely Tyson, so we know it\u2019s all Very Important; did these characters exist in the original play?). It\u2019s pretty mediocre all-around.<\/p>\n

Watching this movie was more of an exercise in cultural studies than in moviegoing, or entertainment, or whatever. I mean, I\u2019m floored when I hear that Tyler Perry has made a fortune off of these plays and their straight-to-DVD adaptations<\/a>; and of course now he\u2019s making even more millions via the movie versions. He\u2019s obviously resonating with some<\/i>thing in the African-American subculture, all the more so because his films (and plays?) wouldn\u2019t seem to have any particularly great merit as<\/i> films (and plays).<\/p>\n

Of course, you could say the same thing about the Christian subculture and the Left Behind<\/a><\/i> movies, and gay friends of mine have grumbled about the low quality of movies produced primarily for the gay subculture, too. These films, too, are more interesting for what they reveal about their cultures than for any inherent artistic or even entertainment-value reasons.<\/p>\n

As for the audiences that embrace such films, I guess they figure mediocrity isn\u2019t so bad when it\u2019s our<\/i> mediocrity.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"