![]() Special credit must go to Roberts for finding a fresh way to play a cliched character - and for the amusement she and Perry generate during a deftly sustained scene in which Barbara and Uncle Joe remember a decades-earlier close encounter. Here, he’s playing almost entirely for laughs, and it’s a winning game plan more often than not. Better still, Perry has almost entirely eschewed the soap-operatics that have weighed heavily in his previous efforts. (Perry wisely refrains from showing the siblings intermingling with classmates.) Late in the story, Madea appears to pull off a profitable scam, but there’s no pay-off narrative-wise for this plot twist.Įven so, pic features enough raucous humor to please longtime fans of the Madea franchise, while soft-pedaling the spiritual uplift that Perry typically oversells in his comedies. Although much is made of the need for the Needlemans to maintain a low profile - and to avoid sticking out as white folks in a neighborhood where, as Madea warns, “nothin’ ain’t white” - Madea insists on enrolling both Cindy and Howie in a local school. “Witness Protection” is something less than waterproof when it comes to adhering to its own inner logic. But that’s just long enough for Madea to share with George and Kate her distinctive tough-love methods for rearing troublesome children, and for George and Madea to launch a bold plan to retrieve the missing money on their own. The Needlemans expect to stay with Madea and her grumpy brother Uncle Joe (Perry in old-age makeup and overalls) until George finds a way to help prosecutors track down the millions diverted by the mob. ![]() Eugene Levy hits all the right notes as George Needleman, a Wall Street investment bank exec who’s been set up as a fall guy for one of his company’s shadier sidelines, a mob-backed Ponzi operation that has bilked charities for millions.ĭesperate to avoid a long-term prison sentence, the oblivious bean-counter agrees to relocate with his family - trophy second wife Kate ( Denise Richards), sullen teen daughter Cindy (Danielle Campbell), overweight son Howie (Devan Leos) and borderline-senile mom Barbara (Doris Roberts) - to Madea’s quiet little corner of Atlanta.
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