Madea’s Witness Protection (2012)

(On Cable TV, November 2021) Perhaps slightly more overly comedic than other Tyler Perry films, Madea’s Witness Protection combines a stock comic premise with Perry’s outspoken character to produce something that doesn’t fly high, but scores a few chuckles along the way. Some of the credit goes to the casting, with Eugene Levy anchoring the plot as an incompetent CFO left holding the bag after some corporate embezzlement. Through criss-crossing plot coincidences that would be unacceptable anywhere but in a Perry comedy, he and his dysfunctional family soon find themselves relocated in Madea’s house, with the elderly woman free to set them straight. The third act eventually has the protagonists striking back against the (unseen) fraudsters, leading to an upbeat ending. This is all clearly playing into Tyler’s wheelhouse, as he plays three roles and gets to be both the serious anchor as much as the comic powerhouse, with Madea using some folksy wisdom to whip an upper-class white family into shape. I won’t get into the plotting coincidence that litter the entire script (all the way to hidden links being revealed between the characters), nor the fairly easy humour that peppers the script, especially during the fish-out-of-water third act designed to let Madea rampage through New York City. I started looking at Perry’s filmography out of curiosity but now, something like eight films in, I’m actually becoming something of a fan despite the sloppiness of the scripts and bare-bones directing — it’s a comfortable universe, Madea is a good character (albeit rarely as fully exploited as she could be) and Perry does deliver something of a very specific take. Madea’s Witness Protection does have the advantage of not taking very daring dramatic swings, making the comic result easier to accept.