Jamie
Boo! Get ready for some kooky spooky action up in hellur. When Madea is called to watch her rambunctious niece she gets in the middle of a frat’s big Halloween party and soon finds herself in the brunt of their hijinks. Can she stop the frat and teach everyone a lesson before it’s too late? Find out in Boo! A Madea Halloween.
How?! Brian has a big business trip planned right on Halloween and is dismayed to find his unruly teenage daughter Tiffany is dead set on two things: attending a frat party for which she is clearly under age and NOT being watched by anyone. No way. Brian knows what to do. He calls Madea into action who shows up trailing her group of crazy characters. They take up residence in the house but are almost immediately duped when they find Tiffany has snuck out to the party. While she is having a load of fun she’s horrified to see Madea and her pals crash the party and get all up in the business. They are all thrown out and Madea knows exactly what to do: call in the popo (anonymously of course, Madea is a criminal after all). The police arrive, Tiffany is sent home (none too soon either as the frat kids have discovered she’s only 17) and they begin to plot their revenge. The gang of elderly nogoodniks begins to have all kinds of spooky things happen to them and they do not like it. They flee the house and are accosted by loads of ghosts and ghouls and it’s real scary. But soon they come to find out about the frat’s scheme and start a scheme of their own. Forcing Brian home to deal with his daughter he finally gets her to understand the idea of rules and consequences only to have the police arrive and take her into custody in connection to the disappearance of her best friend. The police also arrive at the frat house and find Tiffany’s friend dead in the basement. Oh no! All the girls and the frat kids are loaded onto a bus to be transported to jail and they are real scared… but soon realize that they’ve all been set up by Brian and Madea with the help of Brian’s cop friends. THE END. Or is it? (it isn’t! There’s gonna be more!)
Why?! Why is the wrong question for a Madea film. Or perhaps it’s the perfect question because every film is essentially the same once you see through all the ten minute rambling conversations Madea has with people. Madea is throwing down hard truths for everyone and they best learn them because otherwise shit’s gonna get real. Ya dig?
Who?! I can’t help but love me a little mid-film music video. In fact if I was given the title of film czar I would require all films to have a music video interlude and the world would be better for it. Here Tyga gets up on stage at this random frat Halloween party and performs Rack City much to the chagrin/delight of Madea and her friends. It’s an A+ and I don’t even give grades for this section.
What?! Since Tyga took the previous spot I think it’s important to mention here that in a lot of ways this film was an advertisement for numerous YouTube/Vine/TikTok/Probably some other things I don’t know teenybopper stars of the future. Perry was pretty open about them being cast in order to make the franchise hipper and newer. So a younger audience could delight at the branded stars they know, while getting to know their new best friend: Madea.
Where?! As is the case with most Perry films I know this was shot in Atlanta, but not sure it’s ever made clear that the film actually takes place there. It would certainly be a large city as Brian is a federal prosecutor, but that’s pretty much all we get as far as I remember. I still think it’s Atlanta so a D for now.
When?! Finally get an A+ Settings Alert as the title so appropriately tells us that this takes place on Halloween. As Patrick mentioned, though, not a single ghost or supernatural being in the whole thing. I would have liked at least for a ghost to show up at the end even if it was a not scary Casper type ghost. Just for a quick laugh about how not Halloween the film is in general. A+.
Wow. Sometimes you just need a film to come around after years of inuring ourselves to bad movies to remind us of what it’s like to be alive. Madea can do that when you start watching a scene and there are just piles and piles of Madea jokes being thrown your way and honestly you can’t tell if there is even a movie there or whether the entire thing will just be jokes on jokes forever and ever. And then ten minutes will pass and they’ll still be talking about the same broken down car that Madea was doing drugs in or something back in the day or explaining how Brian is a piece of shit or whatever and you’re mind won’t even be blown because your mind no longer exists. That’s Madea and I think I enjoyed the experience even if the film itself is really bad. If I had to give out a positive it would be Joe, Tyler Perry’s third character in the film, who is an old man and is actually kinda funny sometimes. I dug him. He was cool. If I had to pick out something bad it would be the numerous jokes about beating children, which would shock me except it seemed in line with everything else in the film. Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Boo! A Madea is Seeing Some Ghosts for Real, but She Doesn’t Take Guff from Ghosts so it isn’t a Big Deal I Say Boo to You Ghost, Boo! I think that is the full title of the film. Let’s go!
P’s View on the Preview – So I think it is important to recognize something with this film. Going into the film we’ve seen a bunch of Tyler Perry films, and most are terrible (Alex Cross, Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, etc.), but I distinctly and bizarrely remembered vaguely enjoying Madea Christmas. The thing is? It isn’t really true. Looking back we were merely surprised we did not loath it. The film is still very much in your face with the religious messaging, and that’s fine since that is pretty explicitly the purpose of the film. But … weirdly just by thinking I enjoyed Madea Christmas made me really really not enjoy this film. The preview itself isn’t much to go on because the preview effectively says: this film stars Tyler Perry as Madea, which we already knew. What were my expectations? So a few things popped out about the film. First, that it stars a bunch of YouTube personalities, so terrible acting was definitely on the table. Second, it is definitely NOT an actual ghost film, so I was definitely going to be disappointed.
The Good – I think I am able to step back from Madea as a concept, understand that most of the film just isn’t messaging to me, and go about judging the film on something at least a bit closer to its merits. I think Tyler Perry is a wizard when it comes to film financing, and there is a reason he is very close to being a billionaire (he likely will be in the next few years). The film can, on very rare occasions, have amusing quips. And despite all of the characters being incredibly mean spirited and grating … I can also get why people find them amusing in their own right. To be clear, I don’t actually enjoy anything I watched in the film, but I don’t begrudge the fact that Tyler Perry’s audience does or that Tyler Perry is able to make movies that cater to that audience. Best Bit: Some amusing quips.
The Bad – The whole storyline with the father-daughter relationship is so bizarre that there is a 15 minute conversation about how Tyler Perry’s character’s father beat him so badly he was in intensive care at the hospital and it is played like “man, your daughter is bad news, you should probably beat her to an inch of her life, haha.” That for real is a message in the film. The relationship with Tyler Perry’s character’s ex-wife is also such that the film feels misogynistic, even though I believe that Tyler Perry sees it as a “weak willed man” joke rather than a “harpie ex-wife” joke. The film has no ghosts and for that I say boo! I say boo! to Boo! A Madea Halloween. I wanted Madea screaming about how she has warrants to actual ghosts, not the police! Whatever. The rest of the film is mostly 15 minute long segments of Tyler Perry having really bad improv sessions with himself. It almost makes you tear your hair out as they beat yet another unfunny joke into the ground for 10 minutes straight. This movie is not good and is, in fact, probably the worst of the three Madea films we have watched thus far. Fatal Flaw: Incredibly long sequences of not funny improvisation between various forms of Tyler Perry.
The BMT – I’m certainly getting more comfortable watching films that I’m not really the intended audience for. I could see a future where we have watched all of the Madea films (a truly dire future indeed). That being said, for the most part Madea films are the kind of films we try to avoid (like Saving Christmas for example). Films that are just low hanging fruit for people to dunk on because Tyler Perry wanted to make a cool $50 million on a 6 day shoot. But really … is there anything wrong with wanting to make $50 million on a 6 day film shoot? I don’t think so. Did it meet my expectations? No! But by that I mean yes, because I think in my heart I knew I secretly wanted to silently scream in horror as it dawned on me that there weren’t going to be actual ghosts in this film. I have to say … there better be ghosts in Boo 2! Otherwise, I riot.
Roast-radamus – I think Hattie Love absolutely qualifies as a Planchet (Who?). Her sole purpose appears to be to sit and take shit from Joe and Madea. Obviously this is a Not-so-secret Holiday Film (When?) for being rather explicitly about Halloween and the various shenanigans that young people get into on that day. And I think Worst Twist (How?) gets in there for the not very subtle (and cruel) joke Tyler Perry plays on his daughter and the frat brothers, tricking them into thinking they (checks notes) accidentally murdered someone and are going to jail for the rest of their lives … hilarious. Definitely closest to a Bad.
StreetCreditReport.com – I think it is quite odd that the film didn’t make any of the major lists in 2016, but I imagine this is because it must have come out in October? … But I’m pretty sure Saving Christmas dominated the lists in its year, so I’m less than convinced that is actually the case. There is this rather amusing list here, which looks at all of the Madea films. Pretty heartening to see Boo! coming in just under Madea Christmas. I think that is 100% right in retrospect. Christmas was saved a little bit, oddly, by Larry the Cable Guy who I remember just being a charming pleasant foil to the brash Madea. There is no such foil in Boo! unfortunately.
I’m going to have to skip the You Just Got Schooled section today. I think I would have maybe watched Hubie Halloween, but for a variety of reasons I really just don’t have time for that. So I’ll have to leave it there, I wrote a lot in the other sections anyways. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 