Comedy characters change and grow. Sometimes, as we see in "Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas," they become so much like old relatives that their edge is gone.
That doesn't mean there still aren't smiles to be had here, even if there's about as much satiric bite as a toothless reindeer would have.
Madea (Perry) jumps into a job as a greeter at the department store of her relative Eileen (Anna Maria Horsford) with just a few weeks to go before Christmas. It is, for Madea, the perfect excuse to harangue and yell at strangers. When Eileen's daughter Lacey (Tika Sumpter), a teacher, needs help putting together a Christmas jubilee in her small Alabama town, Eileen and Madea head down with Lacey's onetime high school boyfriend Oliver (JR Lemon).
Eileen has hopes of getting Lacey and Oliver back together, but doesn't know Lacey is married to Connor (Eric Lively). Lacey's kept it a secret because Connor is white, and Lacey knows her mom won't approve. Meanwhile, Connor's parents (played by Kathy Najimy and Larry the Cable Guy) show up, and, despite their self-described redneck appeal maintain a liberal, steadfast belief that "you don't look at skin, you look at heart."
Madea certainly agrees, in her bull-in-a-china shop way. She also has a lot to say to some bullying kids when she sits in as a teacher in Lacey's class (one of the film's high points is her retelling of the origin of Christmas, using free association, celebrity names and gobbledygook). When Lacey's town leaders first threaten to cancel the jubilee, then find themselves constrained by corporate sponsors, the best hope for a miracle anyone has is standing up for what's right.
As is typical of Perry's sprawling style, there are plot strands piled on top of each other, garnished with a bit of tinsel. Connor has to out-tough a local ne'er-do-well (Chad Michael Murray) in order to show him how to be nice, while a little boy needs to be given more time to sing and excused from doing hard farm work.
Most of the actors just go through the motions, but Sumpter is appealing, and "The Facts of Life" alum Lisa Whelchel provides an accomplished, affable turn as the harried school principal.
But Madea is the main attraction, of course, and almost a decade since Perry brought his popular stage persona to film in "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," she's become sort of like an African-American, cross-dressing Bob Hope: Smirking at the camera, doing gibberish-patter (mixing up "apparel" with "pears," quoting "the Virgin Pina Colada Mary ... J. Blige") and giving the surly growls fans love, Madea's shtick recalls the effortless, amusing shrug Hope used in many of the "Road" movies and throughout the 1950s.
Not that that's entirely a bad thing, as Madea is the glue that holds this shambling but well-intentioned family dramedy together, through interracial dilemmas, KKK gags, up-with-people rallying cries and goofy physical humor. Madea's not as subversive as she used to be, but the old girl still can earn a chuckle.
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