Comedy/Drama, not recommended for young children: mature themes, sexual content, and some language throughout

Tyler Perry once again summons his alter ago Madea Simmons for another installment of the Madea series of films as he attempts to aid a family of adult children and their spouses to plan an anniversary party for their parents only to have the festivities change at the last minute due to unforeseen circumstances.

In this film, we see three adults planning a surprise party for their parents with their respective spouses also present. Among the adults planning the party is a friend of the family’s named Renee who is seen to be very excited about the festivities as she has been a friend of the family’s for a long time and feels they deserve it

Jesse is one of the three adult children. At the beginning of the film, he announces his engagement and says his fiancee will be at the pary, whom he met through hid brother A.J.

With Madea comes the addition of her normal group of friends; Joe, (played by Tyler Perry,) Hattie, and Aunt Bam who also attend the party

Also attending the party is Uncle Heathrow, (played by Tyler Perry.” He is a quadriplegic who at one time served in a war and lost his legs. He is known for being very inappropriate with his language, saying whatever he wants and admitting in one scene that he was happy when his wife died. In preparation for the party, he opts to bring the cake, which the rest of the family disagree with as they know it will be sexually explicit based on his demeanor. The rest of the family suggest he pick up crackers instead but he insists on bringing the cake. As his vocal chords don’t work due to a hole in his throat, he must speak with a microphone attached to his throat, the echo of which causes sounds to come out. It is revealed that he was responsible for inviting Madea, Joe, and Aunt Bam to the party despite some objections from the rest of the family as they are not blood related. It is also implied that Anthony, (the father of the children,) is not fond of Madea for unknown reasons. However, with encouragement from some other family members, Madea is welcomed into the party.

When their parents Anthony and Vianne arrive home too early, (as the rest of the children are still setting up for the party,) they are told to leave and come back as the children feel they could use some alone time as it is their anniversary. Vianne says she will go to church while Anthony admits having forgotten to buy her an anniversary present and says he will go shopping while she is at church to buy it.

Sometime later, Jesse receives a call from his fiancee Gia. She tells him that by chance, herself and A.J. were on the same flight from their hometown and that they will rent a car to drive to the party together, which Jesse declines at and offers to pick her up instead. A.J. assures him that they will not be late and that he will take care of Gia.

The scene then shows A.J. and Gia in a hotel room having spent the night together, having taken an early flight the night before to be able to spend time alone before the party. While Gia feels bad for what she is doing to Jesse, A.J. says he doesn’t feel bad as they only met through het anyway and tells her that Jesse can’t give her what he can. He tells her they need to take the time they have to spend with each other because they won’t have it once they get to the party. As the two begin getting intimate, they hear a moaning noise from the next room. A.J. recognizes the voice as Anthony’s and goes to check. Gia says that it’s just a random couple getting intimate and that if he goes to check on them, she will leave. As A.J. opts to go and check anyway, Gia leaves the hotel. He opens the door to find Renee dressed in black leather and Anthony lying motionless in the bed.

Meanwhile, Brian, (Tyler Perry appearing as himself and not as another character,) arrives with Madea, Joe, Hattie, and Aunt Bam having checked into the same hotel where they run into A.J. (unaware of what he had been doing before they arrived.) They crowd the door to Anthony’s room while the gang makes numerous sexual jokes towards Anthony and Renee. Brian then realizes that Anthony isn’t breathing and attempts C.P.R. but is unsuccessful in reviving him. A.J. then yells at Renee and demands she call an ambulance.

Meanwhile the rest of the family is back at the house and unaware of what had occurred having tried to contact both Vianne and Anthony numerous times with no luck. As they are hours late to this point, everybody begins to worry. Gia arrives at the party without A.J. which confuses Jesse but she covers by saying they got separated at the airport.

A.J. arrives at the party and is confronted by his wife Carol for being late as the part was being thrown for his parents and she felt like the least he could do was be on time for it. A.J. brushes her off and asks to speak to his mother. Moments later, Vianne arrives at the house but is unsure of where Anthony is as he did not pick up his phone when she tried to call him and failed to pick her up at church. A.J. reveals that he is in the hospital and had a heart attack due to the affair with Renee. However, the details of how the heart attack occurred are kept under wraps.

The next morning, Brian, Madea, Joe, Hattie, and Aunt Bam are seen in the waiting room of the hospital where the crew are acting out inappropriately for the situation by cracking jokes and being sarcastic, etc. They are also seen talking very loud and yelling at each other while Madea attempts to stop Hattie and Bam from revealing the cause of Anthony’s heart attack. Joe in particular is not fond of Anthony for unknown reasons. He is at fault the most for cracking jokes against Anthony. He also says that he hates hospitals and recounts a time when he went there for a headache and they ended up cutting his foot off. He says that he hopes Anthony doesn’t die since he owes him money while saying numerous times that he doesn’t like him, (sometimes as a response given as to why he is acting the way he is given the circumstances.)

After Vianne and the rest of the family arrive at the hospital, the crew, (mostly Hattie and Joe,) come close to revealing the cause of Anthony’s heart attack to Vianne after she questions how it could have happened especially since Anthony was ok the last time they were together. With help from Madea, the true cause remains un-revealed. When Brian notices that the joking between Joe and Hattie has began to worry Vianne more, he intervenes and tells them to stop admitting that the situation is hard enough to deal with as it is and apologizing for upsetting Vianne. Just then the doctor arrives to give the news that Anthony has passed away due to the heart attack. As the children hold their spouses to grieve, Joe sarcastically says that it’s sad that Anthony is gone, not because he will miss him but because he still owes him money.

Back at the house, Vianne dismisses all of the greetings from everyone and goes upstairs, needing some time to herself while A.J. Jesse, and the rest of the family stay downstairs. The family begins to question what really happened to Anthony when Brian suggests that Madea, Joe, Hattie, and Aunt Bam leave as it is getting late. At the same time, Renee also leaves and A.J. walks her to her car intent on confronting her for her involvement in Anthony’s death. He tells her she isn’t welcome around the family anymore and that he will tell his mother what really happened if she comes back. She responds by saying that she will tell Jesse what happened between him and his fiancee if he tells his mother. As A.J, gores back in the house, Jesse appears and says that A.J. was always there for him growing up where his father hasn’t been and asks him to be his best man, (having missed the conversation between Renee and A.J.)

Two days later, the funeral takes place with Madea serving as master of ceremonies. The funeral lasts hours longer than it should have, with several of the women Anthony has been with over the years attending. This leads to a series of comedic events where the clock is seen going round and round hour after hour to accentuate how long the funeral has been. Also, the length of the funeral has caused many of the people attending it to either leave or fall asleep our of boredom. This includes the driver of the hearse who paces around the vehicle waiting for the funeral to end and eventually falling asleep on top of the roof of the hearse. The funeral only ends when Anthony’s erection causes the casket partially open, (which is revealed to have been a reason why they couldn’t close it in an earlier scene,) which causes everyone to run away in comedic fear.

While at the reception, (which takes place at Vianne and Anthony’s house,) A.J. reveals the affair to Jesse while inebriated which sparks a huge fight between members of the family. The fight is made worse when A.J. calls Vianne weak for having stayed with Anthony even though she knew he had been cheating. Eventually, Renee is blacklisted from the family by Vianne when she finds our her role in Anthony’s death. Vianne goes on a rant in response to A.J. calling her weak and says she knew he was cheating but stayed with him as she couldn’t take care of the children on her own without his help. She tells Carol she can can do better than A.J. and tells Jesse he can do better than Gia. Having said her piece, she opts to allow the children to solve their own problems and says she wants nothing to do with their problems anymore. She says that she will only look after her own needs from now on before going to bed for the night.

The next morning as the family prepare to leave the house, Jesse confronts A.J. by saying “I love you all but don’t call me unless someone dies.” A.J. apologizes to both Carol and Jesse when Vianne calls using the same phone Anthony used. It is then revealed that Anthony wasn’t the real father of the children but rather it was a man named Roy, (played by Mike Tyson who makes a cameo appearance.) She leaves the house saying Roy is taking her to Las Vegas for the weekend as the credits roll.

This movie has been one of my favourites throughout the 2010’s. I really enjoyed seeing it in theatres and I have been a fan of Madea every since I first saw the movie. I have given Tyler Perry all of the credit on one of his greatest creations. I think Madea in this movie shed some comedic light on an otherwise somber and unpleasant topic and I know not many people can find any sort of humour in losing a loved one for obvious reasons. I used to go to the public librairies to see if they had any copies of it and if they di, I would watch it multiple times when I had the opportunity to do so, sometimes even disregarding the return date as a result. This is how much I liked it.

My least favourite character in this movie is A.J. Throughout the movie, he is rude and arrogant to others around him. I also can’t forgive what he did to his brother in this film by sleeping with his fiance, all the while Jesse thought of him as close family.

The movie also shows hints of racism, although these are very subtle and hard to see in most cases throughout. However, this is apparent in the funeral scene where Madea bans one of the guests for being while despite him being a friend of Anthony’s and he says: “Do you think this is a caucasian funeral? This is not a caucasian funeral. You need to leave.”

Another scene shows Madea expressing disbelief after he finds out Vianne wants to have the funeral in two days. Though I don’t remember exactly how he said it, it was something to the effect that it takes longer than two days for black people to be buried as opposed to white people.

There is also a scene that takes place where a subtle hint of racism is implied by a police officer. As Brian is driving Madea and the gang to the party, they are pulled over by a cop. Rather than being professional, the cop yells at Brian and tells him to stop resisting and being rude despite Brian having done nothing to warrant that treatment. In my opinion, the treatment could have been a result of him being black and the officer being white and therefore the cop believes he’s a thug. This could have been regarded as racism. It is later revealed by the cop, (after he had calmed down and became more professional,) that Brian was being pulled over for swerving. His sudden change in demeanor confuses Brian and he vows to get to the bottom of why the cop changed so quickly. However, this is never revisited again throughout the movie and the cop was never seen again and his presence movie as well as this entire scene was irrelevant to the main plot. Therefore, I question why it was put in the movie.

All in all, it was a great movie, one that I would definitely recommend.

Movie rating: 9.5 out of 10. While this was a good movie, it falls just short of a perfect 10 in my opinion due to the subtle hints of racism throughout as well as showcasing infidelity between family members.

Note: This was the final movie in a series of movie containing the character of Madea. There was one other one I’ve seen called “Tyler Perry’s Boo 2: A Madea Halloween,” which focuses on the gang tasked to retrieve Brian’s daughter, (who does not appear in this film,) from a Halloween party she’s attending after she breaks curfew. While I have seen this movie, I don’t remember enough about it to write a review. However, I will write one if I ever watch it again. As well, I will write reviews on any other Madea movies I watch from this point forward.