Director: Tyler Perry
Writer: Tyler Perry
Stars: Tyler Perry, Cassi Davis Patton, Tamela Mann
Synopsis: Madea and family attend Tiffany’s rushed destination wedding in the Bahamas. Tensions arise as Tiffany doubts her fiancé, Zavier, and her mother acts strangely, raising suspicions about the marriage’s legitimacy.
No one in Hollywood seemingly works faster than Tyler Perry, who has now released his third film of the year with the fourteenth installment of the never-ending Madea franchise in Madea’s Destination Wedding. And while it may not be as baffling as Perry’s previous two directorial efforts, Duplicity and Straw, profoundly misguided melodramas for entirely different reasons, it’s also one of the dullest movies of the entire year, with little to no laughs or entertainment offered in what looks like a 102 minute commercial for the movie’s main attraction.
Essentially, the gist is to put Madea (Tyler Perry), Joe (also Tyler Perry) and the franchise’s bevy of key supporting characters, including Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis Patton), Cora (Tamela Mann), and Mr. Brown (David Mann) in situations we haven’t seen before. After all, we’ve survived two Halloweens, a trip to the Big House, a funeral, and even a crossover with Mrs. Brown’s Boys in the franchise’s last movie, Madea’s Family Reunion.
However, we’ve yet to see the titular character take an exotic trip outside the confines of her home. It gives Perry the vehicle to step these protagonists out of their comfort zones and put them in one zany situation after the next. At least, someone with an understanding of comedic timing and pacing would’ve done this, but Perry’s proposition is incredibly languishing, with the “Destination Wedding” in question arriving after 45 minutes of extended sequences of verbal comedy that’s essentially a repetition of a line that an elderly character misunderstood to paint them as senile and/or confused.
If that’s your kind of humor, you’re going to have a blast watching Madea’s Destination Wedding. But for those looking for actual comedy, you’re only going to find it sparingly. There was…*checks notes*…one joke that made me laugh. I laughed in spite of myself because of how stupid the punchline was, but it’s actually quite clever in how Perry primes attentive viewers with a needle-drop of The Clark Sisters’ “Center of Thy Will,” which is sampled in Beyoncé’s “Church Girl.” It results in the funniest physical gag of the movie and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
One can’t say the same for the entire movie, which focuses on the wedding of Brian’s (another character played by Tyler Perry) daughter, Tiffany (Diamond White), at the Atlantis Resort in The Bahamas. There’s the obvious setup, which lasts an eternity, in which Brian introduces Tiffany’s fiancé, Zavier (Xavier Smalls), to the family. Then there’s the scene where Madea, Joe, and the rest of the family need to get their passports, and it also lasts an eternity. After that, they go to the airport, and there’s an elongated bit where Madea pretends to have her purse missing, until they board the plane, and a plethora of the insensitive, ill-conceived humor that Perry is most known for comes back in full force.
Yet, nothing will prepare you for what happens as the family lands in Atlantis. While the first half or so isn’t particularly well-shot or interesting, it at least stays within the confines of what audiences expect nowadays from Madea movies: large bouts of improvisation stitched together by a threadbare plot that has little to no importance with the situations its characters are stuck in. As soon as they arrive at the actual location of Atlantis, the movie shifts gears and becomes a commercial for the resort.
I should’ve expected this – the way Perry shoots the movie is different from previous Madea films, even the ones that look televisual, such as the Boo! A Madea Halloween duology. This one has the glossy feel of an “as seen on TV” ad, where paid actors overwhelmingly promote a product, with no shame, and hyperbolically describe its qualities so it becomes tantalizing for a semi-gullible viewer to buy it. This is also how Perry films Atlantis: it all looks incredible, too good to be true, and you’d likely be inclined to book a room as soon as the credits roll.
(Side note: I have been there, and it is pretty damn great, but in no way is this an endorsement of what Perry is doing. He should actually feel some bit of shame for suckering his audience into this supremely long advertisement for the resort, almost as if Atlantis financed the project under the condition that he would promote the place as much as possible.)
It’s terribly unashamed at how it effectively integrates as much promotion for Atlantis as possible, not only in how it films its key attraction, “The Leap of Faith,” (replete with a Mr. Brown GoPro POV, because why not), but how it lets the characters peruse the lobby, ask questions about what’s included with their room key, tour their suites, go to the Casino, the gift shop, you name it. It also creates dialogue scenes with Atlantis employees that function only as explainers for the audience to know exactly what they can do in the resort, what’s complimentary and what isn’t, and how “paying” works (there is a funny bit that comes out of the latter, but it, like most of the jokes, gets stretched until Perry punches dead air).
We spend an unforgivably long amount of time touring the place before the actual wedding happens, and Perry throws in one of his giallo-esque twists to “spice up” the plot which are always nonsensical and unnecessary. While its denouement may not reach the inane levels of Duplicity (an ending so catastrophically awful you will never see coming and it must be seen to be believed) or the poor taste conclusion of Straw, it still is completely unwarranted and actively makes what is otherwise a disposable wedding comedy we’ve all seen before worse.
But that’s the Tyler Perry touch for you – a filmmaker who desperately wants to be taken seriously as an artist but doesn’t feel like he wants to sharpen his writing/directing skills at all. If he thought about the considerations that go into making good movies, he’d probably make one a year, but that wouldn’t keep the empire he built floating, wouldn’t it? I’ll always give my commendations to Perry for building his own studios from scratch and attaining wealth that few will in their lifetimes. If only his movies were better…
