Madea's Big Happy Family

Name: Madea's Big Happy Family
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Released: April 22, 2011
Duration: 106 min
Rating: 45
Cast: Bow Wow, Loretta Devine, Tyler Perry

2011

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Mixed or average reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews

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Mixed or average reviews based on 35 Ratings

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4.9

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4.9	User Score Mixed or average reviews based on 35 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Lionsgate | Release Date: April 22, 2011 | PG-13

Starring: Bow Wow, Loretta Devine, Tyler Perry

Summary: The film will be the eleventh title in the studio's hit Perry franchise. Perry will reprise his signature role as the straight-shooting Madea in the film, adapted from his new stage play "Madea's Happy Family," which is currently on tour in the U.S. Isaiah Mustafa the 'Old Spice Guy' plays Calvin, who is struggling with his marriage andThe film will be the eleventh title in the studio's hit Perry franchise. Perry will reprise his signature role as the straight-shooting Madea in the film, adapted from his new stage play "Madea's Happy Family," which is currently on tour in the U.S. Isaiah Mustafa the 'Old Spice Guy' plays Calvin, who is struggling with his marriage and family relationships. It has not been announced who will play his opposite. (Lionsgate)

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Director: Tyler Perry

Genre(s): Drama, Comedy

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 106 min

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Critic Reviews

Frank Scheck

Apr 22, 2011

The film is best appreciated as a showcase for the hugely popular titular character, with Perry tearing into the role with hugely entertaining comic gusto. Read full review

Boxoffice Magazine Todd Gilchrist

Apr 22, 2011

So satisfying and surprisingly fun. Read full review

Glenn Whipp

Apr 25, 2011

That there is little difference in tone between the end credits gag reel and the previous 100 minutes represents a triumph of consistency that Burt Reynolds, even in his heyday, never achieved. Read full review

Joe Leydon

Apr 23, 2011

Another lumpy mix of broadly played ethnic comedy, deadly serious soap operatics, and aggressively rousing religious uplift. Picture may help him reconnect with faithful fans. Read full review

Melissa Anderson

Apr 26, 2011

Too lazy (and, it seems, cynical) to give his audiences any more than he thinks they want, Perry appears to have given up on making a coherent movie altogether. Read full review

Richard Corliss

Apr 25, 2011

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. Read full review

Elizabeth Weitzman

Apr 22, 2011

Perry's characters have always been drawn with broad strokes, as heroes or villains. In this case, all the villains are young women, and all the young women in this film-without exception--are monstrous. Read full review

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User Reviews

LaTonyaThompson

Apr 24, 2011

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Regardless of what people say, people know what they like. People don't let society manipulate you into liking one style of work. You are free to like whatever you choose too.

Madea's Big Happy Family IS OFF THE CHAIN! Listen, if I can stop laughing enough, I will TRY to tell you guys about the movie. 1st of all, the movie is absolutely HILARIOUS!. I couldnâ… Expand

1 of 4 users found this helpful13

greedybadidea

Jun 13, 2020

Shirley (Loretta Devine), Madea’s niece, goes to visit Dr. Evans (Philip Anthony-Rodriguez) with Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis) about her cancer and finds out that it has gotten worse, and that she may only have a few weeks to live. She asks Aunt Bam to call her children so she can invite them toShirley (Loretta Devine), Madea’s niece, goes to visit Dr. Evans (Philip Anthony-Rodriguez) with Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis) about her cancer and finds out that it has gotten worse, and that she may only have a few weeks to live. She asks Aunt Bam to call her children so she can invite them to dinner to tell them all at the same time. Cora and Mr. Brown (David and Tamela Mann) are also at the hospital, to get Mr. Brown a check-up. Dr. Evans tells them he has to do a colonoscopy on Mr. Brown, and they find a growth that needs to be removed surgically. Meanwhile, Madea (Tyler Perry) furiously and violently drives her car through a restaurant named 'Snax', because the manager had delayed taking her order until after the restaurant had stopped serving breakfast for the day due to being pre-occupied with a phone call, and had been very rude to Madea when she called the manager out on it.

Shirley's children Byron (Shad "Bow Wow" Moss), Tammy (Natalie Desselle-Reid), and Kimberly (Shannon Kane) arrive at Shirley's house later that day for a dinner Shirley has planned for them in order to tell them the sad news about her recent prognosis. Byron arrives with his girlfriend Renee (Lauren London) and his baby Byron Jr. Tammy arrives with her husband Harold (Rodney Perry) and their two kids, with the former two subsequently carrying their argument over directions to the house with them. Kimberly arrives with her husband Calvin (Isaiah Mustafa). Tammy and Kimberly then start to argue when Byron's ex-girlfriend Sabrina (Teyana Taylor) and "baby mama" (Byron Jr.'s biological mother) arrives.

Sabrina quickly gets on Byron's nerves by addressing him as a "drug dealer" due him having been one in the past before being caught and incarcerated. She also lies excessively, uses her son's child support money and supplies for herself, and also tries to goad Byron back into selling drugs, so she can get more money for herself in the process. Moreover, she also turns out to be the manager of 'Smax', the restaurant that Madea crashed her car into earlier that day.

Bryon, Sabrina, and Kimberly then leave the dinner with their respective families due to the constant arguing and drama as well as their own reasons, and Shirley doesn't get the chance to tell the family about her cancer. During the night, Byron is arrested by the police for failing to pay child support. Shirley goes to Kimberly's house to ask her to bail him out, but Kimberly refuses. Calvin instead helps Shirley has to bail him out, much to Kimberly's anger and consternation.

The next day, Aunt Bam tells Madea about Shirley's cancer prognosis and the family's situation, to which Madea promises to gather all Shirley's children for another dinner that evening. She goes to Harold's auto repair garage where Tammy works with him and authoritatively demands her and Harold to go to the family dinner. After she does so, Tammy then gets called by a client, and Madea takes the opportunity to discipline Tammy's two unruly sons for their disrespect, putting fear into them. She then goes to Byron's workplace, but she finds him outside, since he was fired for being late as he spent the night in jail. It is revealed that the manager (played by Palmer Williams, Jr.) had fired Byron because him being late that day was his last strike. Madea then brusquely demands that he is at the family dinner as well and threatens him if he does not come. She proceeds to Kimberly, whom she finds her showing clients a new house, as it is revealed that she is a real estate agent, and she peremptorily yells at her to attend the dinner after Kimberly attempts to ignore her. Meanwhile, Mr. Brown loses a lot of blood during his surgery and the doctor asks Cora to donate some. When she does, she finds out that she doesn't have the same blood type as him, implying that he may not be her real, biological father.

At dinner later on that night, Tammy and Kimberly have a vicious argument that leads to Tammy revealing that Kimberly had a child at 13 years old. Byron realizes that he is Kimberly’s son and storms out of the house, angry that this secret was kept from him. Later that night, for the first time at Madea's urging, Harold puts his foot down towards Tammy and tells her to start respecting him more. Tammy and Harold then sort their problems out: Harold started acting weak because Tammy kept undermining his authority and pushing to be the dominant one in the relationship, and he was fed up with the constant bickering and power struggle between them that resulted, which also caused their sons to have no respect for their parents or anyone else. After dinner, Kimberly and Calvin continue to fight, which results in Calvin leaving and taking their son with him, much to Kimberly's dismay. The next day, when Byron and Renee go to the drugstore, they see Sabrina on "Maury" via the store's TV, humiliating Byron and demanding her child support. This finally pushes Byron over the edge.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Zilcell

Jun 11, 2012

Not only is the movie nonstop funny from start to finish, the cast also makes great use of the story and each person gets enough screen time. It also teaches the life lesson that parents need to stay in control.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

boxenford92

May 14, 2011

Its a Tyler Perry movie. So of course it uses comedy and over the top melodrama to carry it. But it was still pretty fun to sit through. i enjoy Tyler Perry's work but you can tell that all his films feel rushed so he can do 2 films a year

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

MarcDoyle

Apr 26, 2011

I laughed my butt off through much of this movie. No, it won't win any awards, but if you don't think this is funny movie, you're taking life a little too seriously. Madea's message of putting parents back into an effective position of authority is important. It's an excellent cast, andI laughed my butt off through much of this movie. No, it won't win any awards, but if you don't think this is funny movie, you're taking life a little too seriously. Madea's message of putting parents back into an effective position of authority is important. It's an excellent cast, and Tyler Perry keeps delivering. Bring on the next!… Expand

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

FilmVirtue

Feb 20, 2014

This film was not good. But It's also hard to hate. I like Madea and Tyler Perry. Shocking to say but the works of Tyler Perry are entertaining--- Occasionally entertaining. Like I said, I don't hate it, but it isn't exactly good.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Shiira

May 18, 2011

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This time the role-reversal stratagem isn't the stuff of science fiction, when in Sanaa Hamri's "Something New", a black female corporate executive and her friend help themselves to champagne flutes sitting atop a gold platter carried by the white help. "White Man's Burden", the 1995 "Twilight Zone"-like thriller, was full of such racially-oriented topsy-turviness, but the America that Kenya(Sanaa Lathan) lives in, isn't an alternative one. She belongs at that lavish engagement party, admiring the azaleas and lavender in the landscaped garden situated alongside the French-style mansion owned by a waspish old woman, who treats this black woman as an equal, without ceremony. Poles apart from the segregated world of Sirk's "Imitation of Life", in which a light-skinned black girl passes herself off as white in order to be accepted by a wider breadth of society, Kenya gains entrance into white circles, hair weave and all, because she's united through the fellowship of social class. Born into privilege, Kenya has no past to escape from, unlike Kimberly, who in this film, uses her elegance and sophistication as a weapon against the family she despises for being poor. Whereas Sarah Jane rejected her mother for being a "Negro", it's not skin color, but rather the perception that Shirley is too "ghetto" that rankles Kimberly. The real estate agent isn't at all ashamed of being black. It's the sort of black family she was born into that is the problem. Such elitism, in just about any other film, would be frowned upon in an instant. Of course, there are exceptions to any rule, and that's the case here, because this black woman's roots, in all honesty, gives credence to her revulsion. As many critics have pointed out in the past, this filmmaker's oeuvre is "Bamboozled" for real. In other words, a minstrel show. What sort of mother(Aunt Bea), whose daughter(Loretta) is undergoing a cancer exam, flirts shamelessly with the attending doctor and smokes pot in the hospital bathroom? What woman wouldn't want to distance herself from that? Loretta's impending death(which her high-maintenance daughter unfairly knows nothing about), in addition to Kimberly's horrible treatment of her husband, obscures the fact that she's no different from any other adult child who severs ties with the families they clash with.That's because we're too busy being manipulated by the filmmaker's misogynistic designs on womanhood. Tammy, the older sister, arguably, is even worse, since her nasty disposition can't be traced back to a childhood rape. And then there's Byron, a former drug dealer, who turns out to be Kimberly's son, not brother, involved with not one, but two mean-spirited women(his baby mama & his current girlfriend), both who have no humanizing qualities to speak of. Sadly enough, Lathan, so good in "Something New", plays a Kimberly-esque character in "The Family That Preys Together", which makes conspicuous the filmmaker's disposition regarding the woman as breadwinner in a marriage, since Andrea and Kimberly are portrayed as "strong" women in the worst possible sense of the word, emasculating their respective husbands to the brink of emotional sadism. In retrospect, "The Family That Preys Together" functions as as cynical response to "Something New", deconstructing Hamri's vision of the black woman by rejiggering them with the attributes of a man-eater. This filmmaker, estranges the empowered female from the audience with her unrelenting cruelty, inducing us into clamoring for something old like a housewife. Because he can count on the conservative nature of his base, Kimberly is demonized for her assimilation into polite white society, since higher education and upward mobility go against the grain of his fans' "keeping it real" mentality. With each new offering, the cultural war over African-American representation between black intellectuals and black evangelicals resumes itself. The scene involving Kimberly, in her capacity as a real estate agent, showing off property to a white couple before Madea interrupts the open house, is a typically polarizing moment. It signifies different things for different people. With Kimberly's back to the picture window, the moviegoer and the couple witnesses an old dilapidated car pull up in the driveway. Like she was shout of a cannon, Madea opens the rusty door and makes her way to the house. To his ardent supporters, watching Kimberly being put in her place by the grandmother with linebacker-like shoulders, satisfies their outrage that one of their own has the gall to move up the social hierarchy. But to the filmmaker's many high-profile detractors, the window is transformed into a movie screen when the niece stands in juxtaposition with Madea, as the mammy encroaches on the contemporary black woman like a specter from yesteryear, undoing the yeoman's work of female black filmmakers who have all tried to take the spook out of "spook".… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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