by Kim GIll
Madea goes to Jail is the latest box office hits based on the series of plays written by actor Tyler Perry. In this saga, Madea tries to cope with anger issues after she miraculously avoided an immediate jail sentence. Though the movie is entitled “Madea Goes to Jail”, it also tells another story about an aspiring lawyer struggling to move on with his life, escaping a past event that continues to haunt him.
The movie starts off on a comical note, showing Madea’s brush with the law through a series a pictures made into a slideshow. It then brings us to her current to her current legal dilemma. Where she is arrested for a high speed chase that went national. This story then introduces another unrelated story in the film that starts off with a class of law firm employees reviewing Madea’s chase tape, where one person is selected to cover Madea’s trial. After no one volunteers to take the case, it is then selected to Linda Davis played by Ian Overman. She is the fiancé of the hero in this plot Joshua Hardaway played by actor Derek Luke.
One of the main things that was wrong with this film was that it was necessarily almost two hours long due to the second plot. Another thing wrong with this film was that the second plot had two many holes in it. Joshua the epitome of a rags to riches story. He is engaged to Linda who was practically born with a silver spoon in her mouth. They both work for the same law firm along with two friends Chuck and Tanya. The relationship between the four sheds light on two negative stereotypes. The first one being “All middle class Black folks are pretentious, shallow and believe that they are basically better than the rest”. You can see this by how Linda and Tanya talk about poor, drug addicted clients they’ve had in the past. They basically go by the “We’ve had the same opportunities, we made it and they didn’t so why do you feel bad for them”. The second stereotype is sheds light on the belief that “No matter how wrong a woman’s opinion is, do not argue with her if you intend on staying with her”.
You can clearly see this when Chuck tries to encourage Joshua to not rebuttal Linda’s claims. This plot also introduces another subplot that features a crack addicted prostitute named “Candy”. She was a former friend of Joshua’s and doesn’t meet him until he tries her court case. Joshua then declines and tell’s the judge his reason and then assigns Linda to her case. The unfortunate part of the entire situation is the audience is left clueless about the relationship and what was the college incident that they kept referring to throughout the movie.
I was also especially clueless as to why the preacher woman wore the same outfit throughout the film. We also don’t find out until after an hour and change in the movie. Aside from that, Everything else that featured Madea was great. If the movie was just solely based on her character, it would have been great. Due to the second plot, Madea doesn’t go to jail until an hour after the movie where she is housed in the same prison with Candy. Where they become allies. After that, hilarity ensues.
All in all, this was a semi-great film though it could have done better without the second plot. The film tried to hard to mesh the two together. For that I give this film four stars easily. I felt that it was only fair. It was funny, interesting yet it could have done better. Not to mention I watched this film on a bootleg DVD.
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