Well, I wasn't lying.
.....wait, where are you going?! Come back!
Before you gather soap-in-socks to beat me with, let me explain my decision behind paying actual U.S. currency to see a motion picture titled Boo! A Madea Halloween. As mentioned multiple times over this year's iteration of Unseen Terror, I have certain guidelines that I like to follow. One of the final requirements for my list this year was to venture out into a nearby cinema and see something related to the realm of horror. However, given that we are only receiving approximately two pictures this month at the multiplex (after Rings was pushed back, the other choice was Ouija: Origin of Evil), the options were extremely limited. Though I have been hearing surprisingly good things about the latter release, my curiosity was piqued once the trailer for this particular....thing hit the internet. Seeing as how I have never watched a Tyler Perry movie in its entirety (and those parody posters for classic horror films are just brilliant), the concept of the extremely boisterous, over-the-top character of Madea Simmons fighting against ghosts, zombies, or anything else unusual intrigued the shittiest part of psyche. That, and the fact that it was spawned out of a joke made in the Chris Rock vehicle Top Five just had me pondering about what I was in store for.
I'll give Tyler Perry some props before going into any further discussion about Boo! A Madea Halloween. The man creates a plethora of these entries for so little money and turns in such a humongous profit. It's fairly admirable, and he honestly doesn't come across as a bad person if one pays attention to some of his interviews. That being said, he is also a master manipulator. For example, he deceived a poor sucker like me into believing that I was going to see Madea and her "I can't tell if these are also Tyler Perry in drag" costars running from/fighting back against the minions of the underworld, all with hilarious consequences and occasionally ignorant gags or jokes. Well, I hate to spoil the fun, but none of this comes to fruition, as this is essentially a gigantic episode of A Pup Named Scooby Doo, but with more long-winded speeches, references/trips to places of holy gatherings, pranks, and a very linear plot revolving around Madea and her cronies attempting to prevent her grandniece from venturing out during Halloween night, where she intends to join her friends at a large fraternity gathering. Even categorizing it as "comedy-horror" just seems wholly dishonest and misleading.
Though the humor permeating throughout is extremely hit-or-miss and heavily reliant upon you knowing all of the cast from previous outings (as stated above, this is my first trip into the Madea-verse), the horror aspects are pitiful to the point where even the small children that I saw inside of the theater were just walking around, all while looking bored or just not scared whatsoever. Heck, last year's Goosebumps was more frightening than Boo! is, and that featured a wooden dummy making puns that were bad enough to make Chip Chipperson blush. Still, I did get a great deal of amusement out of watching Perry's protagonists punch or whack evil-looking clowns over the head whenever the opportunity presented itself. There are also sequences involving the character of Aunt Bam (whose entire reason for existing seems to be so that Perry can write constant jokes around older, overweight people loving marijuana) potentially dealing with a ghost in the bathroom and stealing candy from chubby kids on Halloween night, and much to my surprise, they got genuine laughs out of me. But man, I could count on one hand about how many times such a thing occurred. To say that this type of humor just eluded me would actually be only partially accurate. Most of Boo!'s jokes come from squabbling over sex, prison, religion, or how kids should be smacked around a little if they are to respect their parents. How much of this you will agree with is entirely dependent on who is looking for what here (even my theater was nowhere near as crowded, or vocal as I thought it would be). If you are desiring to see a grown-ass man dress in drag while just shouting "Aw hell nah!" repeatedly, or gags around elderly people invading a frat house, entering a twerking contest, and yelling at supporting cast members portrayed by unfortunate souls like Big Love's Bella Thorne or X Factor veteran Diamond White, then you are in for the sweetest of treats. These quips are fired out in such quick succession that you almost never get time to breathe, and when you are stuck in a room with Perry playing multiple roles all while arguing with himself, it feels akin to sitting through Eddie Murphy's The Nutty Professor while tripping on acid.
Truth be told, even after Boo! had finished up, I was legitimately uncertain as to how I should even review it. I have been doing this for much longer than even I ever thought that I would, but I can safely say that throughout these years, I've never encountered such a fascinatingly bad motion picture before. Is it the worst flick that I have seen all year? No, it most certainly is not (I don't think this would even make the list of my bottom ten). But, is it worth paying your hard-earned money to see? Well, the answer to that is an eerily-similar Oh DEAR GOD no. And yet, I can say that my life has changed for the better and worse because of my conscious decision to venture out and catch it. It's a staggering bizarre, odd piece of cinema that borders on excruciatingly dumb and lazy (it took approximately eight days to shoot), but there is the absolute smallest part of me saying that if it were to somehow pop up on cable again, you could do far more torturous things with your time. Plus, it never made me angry, which is more than I can say for a handful of movies that I've already sat through.
But my goodness, there is no way in hell that am I fully endorsing a Tyler Perry film that features church references in the first 5-10 minutes and a random stop to one while running away from zombies. Oh lord.
Tomorrow, I need to seriously rethink my life choices. That, or watch another relic from the decades prior to this one.
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