Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection | Movie review

Romeo, Eugene Levy and Tyler Perry, from left, in Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection

Fish out of water rarely fail to generate laughs, which is good news for Tyler Perry's latest diary of a mad black woman. In Witness Protection, the righteously slaphappy Madea (Perry in a dress and wig) agrees to shelter an upper-class white family whose patriarch (Eugene Levy at his most shrill) is the fall guy in a mob-linked corporate Ponzi scheme. The film's best gags—like Madea's elderly brother Joe (Perry again) trying to determine if Levy's character is his illegitimate son—stem from the resulting culture clash. The writer-director-star still hasn't learned to smoothly blend his broad comic sensibilities with his family-values sermonizing, nor has Madea learned less-horrifying disciplinary strategies for those she feels need to be knocked in line. (Again saving her harshest tactics for female transgressors, she tells Danielle Campbell's back-talking teenage hellion that the girl's family has been murdered, just to teach her a lesson about valuing what you have.) Perry's out-of-costume supporting performance as an FBI agent—a foil who gets about as much screen time as the title character—suggests he may be tiring of his own drag routine, even if audiences aren't.