Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Madea Gets a Job: The Play Blu-ray Movie Review

That's all fine and well, but could someone please fire Tyler Perry?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 16, 2013

It’s pointless to complain about Tyler Perry. It’s like moaning about the weather or taxes or in fact death—it may help to lower one’s blood pressure, but it does absolutely nothing to change reality. Perry will continue to churn out product like a veritable Henry Ford assembly line no matter what mere critics may say. It’s perhaps worth mentioning that I personally am a General Motors man myself, which may at least explain some of my antipathy toward Perry’s ever increasing canon. But I’m not alone: while there is obviously a huge, evidently insatiable, audience for Perry’s pieces, few if any of his offerings have received more than lukewarm praise, if even that. But the marketplace speaks, and we all are forced to listen. Repeatedly. Is there any other auteur (forgive me, France) who has been able to not just churn out so many films, but filmed versions of his plays? And let’s not even talk about his newfound partnership with Oprah Winfrey’s OWN Network, which only promises to smother us in even more Perry detritus. Perry obviously has his formula down, and it’s one that has made his adoring audience a virtual ATM that he can reliably count on to stuff his wallet with copious amounts of cash. And by most measures of “success”, that’s all that really counts either in the world of Hollywood (or Atlanta, as the case may be), and maybe even in the United States as a whole. But it frankly means not one whit in terms of intrinsic quality, and that’s probably why Perry tends to raise so many critical hackles with his unstoppable machine of various media releases.

For better or worse, you know what you’re going to get going into any given Tyler Perry enterprise, especially when that enterprise features his tough talking grandma from hell, Madea. In this particular outing, Madea has been consigned to community service and ends up working at the sort of retirement home that only exists in the febrile imaginations of erstwhile playwrights. On an admittedly nicely structured two story set, various stories play out between the residents and workers of the facility. There is of course the requisite amount of Perry-esque hand wringing and melodrama, love affairs gone awry, family dysfunction aplenty, and Madea chiming in with her patented blend of no nonsense advice.

I’ve really tried to give Perry the benefit of the doubt in a lot of the reviews of his material I’ve done for Blu-ray.com, and I have in fact repeatedly stated that it’s obvious the man is phenomenally talented, if awfully unable to edit himself or apply any sense of discipline to his writing and (sometimes especially) his performances. That’s more evident than ever in this completely self-indulgent piece. The odd thing is, there isn’t a peep out of audience for the first ten minutes or so of this production, and then suddenly all hell breaks loose when a spunky elder traipses through the door. That’s nothing compared to the tumult that arises when Perry makes his entrance as Madea, and the really irritating thing is watching him preen and smirk at the adulation coming his way. In case some think I’m being overly critical, over and over again Perry breaks character, giggling at his own supposed hilarity and leaving this play feeling like a half baked high school production.

There is one ostensible saving grace here, and it’s yet another window into Perry’s ever evolving attempts to take over ever last facet of everything he does. Madea Gets a Job is in fact something of a musical, with both original pieces (all co-written by Perry along with Elvin Ross) and some interpolated material (like the great Bill Withers’ classic “Grandma’s Hands”). And it’s here that Madea Gets a Job finally finds some real emotional connection. While the original Perry material suffers from some truly awful lyric writing, the music on the whole is tuneful, if generic. But this cast can sing, and there’s a revival house feeling to a lot of their performances (something aided and abetted by the audience’s shouts of approval). Some of the singing is a little histrionic in that American Idol sort of way, but after the turgid dialogue that Perry provides his characters, any kind of relief is more than welcome.

The play itself actually ends at around the two hour mark, and then yet another bizarre piece in the Perry canon occurs: we get a live stage concert featuring several members of the cast, with Perry dancing awkwardly in the background. The music subsides for a moment late in the proceeding and we get a kind of heartfelt but still completely annoying confessional from Perry, sitting on a stool and recounting his hard struggle up to the heights. Like I said, it’s pointless to complain. The man is sitting at least as much on a figurative mountain of money as he is on any literal stool, and the rabble far, far below must be very hard to hear.

Madea Gets a Job: The Play Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Madea Gets a Job is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a decent enough looking live performance video, but it suffers from some stage lighting issues which often leave the areas closest to the wings bathed in shadow. Perry's choice of lighting also does not contribute to the ability to see fine detail, with an overemphasis on purple and blue lighting that casts a kind of smooth ambience on everything. In fact, there are relatively few close-ups throughout this two hour performance, with the bulk of the camerawork capturing almost all of the proscenium opening. Contrast is generally decent, if not fantastic and there are no real compression issues to speak of.

Madea Gets a Job: The Play Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Madea Gets a Job features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that very nicely reproduces both the dialogue and the sung elements. The surround channels typically are utilized to add hall ambience (including quite a bit of audience noise, some of which sounds "sweetened" to my ears) during the dialogue moments, but there's a really generous spill into the surrounds during the sung elements. Fidelity is excellent and the mix is very well prioritized. Aside from the musical elements, dynamic range is relatively subdued—even Madea doesn't scream and yell quite as much as she does in her films.

Madea Gets a Job: The Play Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Curtain with the Cast of Madea Gets a Job (1080p; 28:07) features self-congratulatory interviews with the principal cast. They were evidently green screened in front of time lapse photography showing the set being constructed, and it's frankly not a pretty sight.

Madea Gets a Job: The Play Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you love Tyler Perry and/or Madea, you'll no doubt want this in your (ever increasing) collection no matter what any clueless curmudgeonly critic may say. The rest of you will probably steer well clear of this vehicle, though it must be stated that musically at least it's often quite well done. The play itself is ridiculous, yet another cog in the wheel of Perry's unstoppable entertainment machine. Mr. Perry, quantity does not equal quality.