I Can Do Bad All by Myself

If you are the director, producer, writer (adapting your own stage play), and costar of a film, you really show how bad you can do all by yourself. Usually thrilling in their lunacy, most Tyler Perry movies can at least keep up their momentum through the combination of an overstuffed plot and the presence of Madea, the big-boned granny who will rip out your urethra if you sass her. Perry's latest — about a boozy nightclub singer, April (Taraji P. Henson), begrudgingly sheltering her niece and nephews — has so many dead moments that singing spots by Gladys Knight, Pastor Marvin Winans, and Mary J. Blige simply highlight, rather than alleviate, the inertia. Madea, tonic in February's Madea Goes to Jail, appears onscreen for only about 15 minutes, at least sharing an inspired bit about Siegfried and Roy on Noah's "arch." If the Atlanta impresario is just bored with cranking out two adaptations a year of his earlier stage work, the audience is getting restless, too: I counted at least three walkouts at the 11 a.m. show I attended. Though Perry might have stuck with his chitlin-circuit material for too long, I still can't wait to see what he does with the choreopoem in an upcoming project — directing Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.