Mabel Simmons — known as Madea to her extended family, and to millions of Tyler Perry devotees — is a dominatrix of tough love. When a 10-year-old disrespects her, she tells him, “I’m gonna beat your ass till your legs run right up your back.” To put the fear of God into a young man with too many problems and no answers, she thunders, “You’re gonna wish that sperm did a backstroke when it met the egg that made you.” Madea is one ballsy woman, perhaps because she is played by Perry in a chalk wig and a housedress with fat-lady padding. He dresses up in drag so he can dress down the world.
Perry is a multimedia dynamo: best-selling author, progenitor of two TV series and, most prominently, writer, actor, director, producer and financier of immensely popular stage plays and movies designed for an adoring audience of older blacks. The 10 films he’s made in the past six years — including Madea’s Family Reunion, Why Did I Get Married? and I Can Do Bad All by Myself — have earned more than $500 million at the domestic box office The movie proved to be an exasperating, fitfully enjoyable jumble of Perryana, full of insult humor, a gospel choir and, not to give too much away, plot elements borrowed from Chinatown, Precious, Imitation of Life and Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke — all restitched and Tyler-made.See why Tyler Perry is the most popular unsung playwright in America.
