‘Madea’s Destination Wedding’ REVIEW: Not the Vacation You’ll Want or Need, But Still a Vacation
‘Madea’s Destination Wedding’ REVIEW: Not the Vacation You’ll Want or Need, But Still a Vacation
Tyler Perry as the titular Madea in Madea’s Destination Wedding | Still courtesy of Netflix and Tyler Perry Studios
Tyler Perry wants to connect. On the more surface level version of this idea, it’s apparent from his Netflix deal, where he’s put out a steady stream of works for TV and film, dramatic and comedic for the accessibility of a global audience. His latest film Madea’s Destination Wedding, is his second one for the streamer this year after the crime drama Straw. Since he started directing films in 2005 with Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Perry has expanded a steady audience that’s followed him since he staged plays and transposed them onto the screen into pretty much any story he puts his name on.
So the important questions come up: is Madea’s Destination Wedding funny? Hardly. Is it a good film? Hardly. But I always find myself drawn to what interesting ideas he brings in a film before squandering them. Sure, they don’t make for rewarding watches, and I understand why many people who’ve written off his works wouldn’t be inclined to see them again.
But being exposed to Philippine cinema, I know we also have comedy films pumped with melodrama and lessons that have aged into some of our best films (with their own problematic, dated aspects too, I should say). I know the idea of a great Tyler Perry film is a longshot, but it’s… I wouldn’t quite say half-full, more so that there’s still water in the glass, but that counts as something worth hoping for, right?
Cassi Davis, David Mann, Tamela Mann and Tyler Perry in Madea’s Destination Wedding | Still courtesy of Netflix and Tyler Perry Studios
The plot, or details of it that come up anyway, follows Brian (Tyler Perry), a world-weary District Attorney who is roped into taking and paying for his entire family’s stay at a destination wedding in the Bahamas. His daughter, Tiffany, is marrying Xavier, a man he does not approve of based on his first impression.
Hotel overspending and hijinks (if you can count it as that) ensues before melodramatic twists rock the plot and marriage for a bit before it wraps itself up in a neat bow at the end. Swap out the names and a few details and it’s pretty much most of Tyler Perry’s Madea films described. There’s nothing new I can say that the films, and this latest one in particular, haven’t done so already. So why do I keep watching for a punchline or comedic set piece to finally land? Because, honestly, I’m one of the few who sees that Perry is having fun playing straightlaced Brian, crude Joe, and chaotic Madea. It’s not always fun that translates to memorable performances, but I find myself seated nonetheless.
Take, for instance, when Brian looks for some guidance from his dad Joe, and aunt Madea. Brian’s dialogue speaks to the aspiration of newer parents to be more restrained in reprimanding their kids, and Perry performs it with a sincerity that feels honest. When paired with his elders’ “tough love” justification, after defending their gun usage humorously, the sincerity feels undercut instead of understood.
It’s interesting that Perry knows not to affirm either side as the right one, possibly knowing the changing tides between the elders he idolized and wanted to pay homage to and the newer generations who want to be affirmed in treading a different path from their parents. The whole scene starts promisingly as a push-and-pull between a man unsure of the way his children are growing up and his elders who say he should’ve been as strict. By the end, that promise falls flat because the film, as many scenes will later confirm, wants to have the cake of seeing newer, younger people’s experiences while eating the cake of still being on the elders’ good side.
Another instance of the film’s flailing empathy is its treatment of Brian’s son, B.J. The film shows B.J. as a 19-year-old wearing a cardigan and a backpack with a plush toy accessory and some of the adults around him view him as childish for this. There’s plenty of dialogue from them about needing to “teach him about life” or “being a man.” Brian is empathic to B.J., though the film does nothing more to display B.J’s maturity than say he has a 4.0 GPA.
How underwritten the character is may be one of the film’s telltale signs of Perry, who wrote the film like most everything he’s made, has a significant disconnect from kids nowadays. If he just looked around more patiently enough, there’s a good chance he may meet a number of plush-toy, accessorizing, soft-spoken, and book-smart college students today who know as much about school as they do to party and to… get intimate like the elders did back then.
Tyler Perry, Xavier Smalls and Diamond White in Madea’s Destination Wedding | Still courtesy of Netflix and Tyler Perry Studios
There’s also the film’s central plot of just how good Tiffany and Xavier are for each other. Time in the film is not really spent on justifying or questioning this, expecting the dramatic twists and climatic dialogue to wrap everything up here. A number of the film’s screentime is largely given over to the shenanigans that Madea and her family, ex-boyfriend Leroy, daughter Cora, and cousin Bam, try and fail to keep her out of. In an hour of the film, Madea meets her granddaughter’s fiancé, they try to get their passports, take a flight to the Bahamas, and check in. In none of that time it is clear what love Tiffany and Xavier have that’s worth fighting for or questioning.
When the film gets to the bachelor party, the Clark Sisters’ gospel song “Center Thy Will” starts a punchline for how Joe tricks the Leroy, a church deacon, into joining the booze-filled party dropping the gospel song’s beat into Beyoncé’s “CHURCH GIRL,” which samples it. “CHURCH GIRL” is a song that’s a declaration of giving space for church-going women to “drop it like a thotty” after a particularly hard time, and the film doesn’t do anything as nuanced as the thematic territory that song explores. Why a bachelor party would be playing “CHURCH GIRL” raises questions of its own, but if it was all to see Perry’s Joe to drop low to the song’s chorus, it’s not the worst punchline to land on.
Anyone who’s seen the Madea films since Diary of a Mad Black Woman, or even I Can Do Bad All by Myself will long for when Perry had a better sense of capturing his film’s budgets in the camera, or when capable actresses like Kimberly Elise and Taraji P. Henson led the stories of these films while Madea’s antics were only peppered in as absurd comic relief.
Between Madea’s Destination Wedding and 2022’s A Madea Homecoming, Madea’s Netflix era films have placed more weight on Perry’s trio of characters becoming audience surrogates to the drama that constantly happens around them, while they’re not filling time bantering with each other. While I don’t think a powerful lead performer chewing into some dramatic lines and tears as Madea flings any weapon in her proximity would significantly improve the franchise’s quality, it would have at least given its drama a better chance at sticking the landing.
At this point, Perry’s success is not up for debate. In fact, he could keep making and telling stories the same way he has for years to the same audience responses and he will keep being able to do so. However, it’s clear as ever that he’s trying now more than ever to connect beyond the audience he already has. If he wants to do that in a meaningful way, he’s gonna have to find a way to make the newer stories he wants to tell — even if they conflict with the elders he is endeared to — worth as much time in his films as Madea lighting up some thieves’ car on fire.
‘Madea’s Destination Wedding’ is now streaming on Netflix.
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