Tyler Perry cashes in on Halloween craze after a Chris Rock joke
|||You know you have arrived as an entertainer when you are satirised on a South Park episode. Madea – herself a made-up character that sprang from the fertile brain of Tyler Perry – and Perry were immortalised in South Park in season 15 in 2011, but it had been a long time coming.
The Mabel “Madea” Simmons character debuted on stage in a series of Perry’s plays. But she got her true big break in Perry’s debut 2005 film, Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman. That film sparked a multimillion dollar franchise and established Perry as the founder of an entertainment empire.
Madea subsequently went to jail, survived a family reunion, celebrated Christmas and much more in a series of films. Apparently, Perry didn’t plan on doing a Halloween film, but Chris Rock made a joke in Top Five, about a movie called Boo! A Madea Halloween, and apparently that was enough to get this one green-lit. Boo! A Madea Halloween (opens today) again stars Perry as Madea, Joe and Brian.
The film begins with Brian leaving his rebellious 17-year-old daughter Tiffany (Diamond White) alone on Halloween. Brian enlists his Aunt Madea, Uncle Joe, and friends Hattie (Patrice Lovely) and pot-smoking Aunt Bam (Cassie Davis) to keep an eye on her. Tiffany is determined to meet her girlfriends at a frat party though, so she tricks her four chaperones with a realistic ghost story that keeps them in their rooms and she sneaks out.
All hell and hilarity break out when Madea, Hattie and Aunt Bam crash the party to bring home their baby girl.
Perry cast several social-media stars as the frat brothers, like YouTube star, Yousef Erakat as the fraternity president and party boy, Honathan, or Instagram star, Brock O’Hurn, who plays toga-wearing frat boy, Horse. The scary comedy features a lot of improv from not only Perry, but also the rest of the cast who took their cue from him, when they weren’t corpsing. – Film Writer
The film is 103 minutes long and has a 10-12 PG age restriction.
