Madea's Family Reunion **½

Madea's Family Reunion
Directed by Tyler Perry. Starring Tyler Perry, Rochelle Aytes, Lisa Arrindell Anderson, Blair Underwood, and Boris Kodjoe. Rated PG-13.

Seeing Madea's Family Reunion was an odd choice for me. I loathed Diary of a Mad Black Woman, but the trailers for this one made me think it could be an improvement on the ghastly original. I must have an eye for this kind of thing. Writer/director Tyler Perry plays Madea, the pistol-packing grandma from the original, who is currently planning a big family reunion. At the same time, she has to deal with a number of other things, such as her love-troubled nieces, Lisa and Vanessa. The former is trying desperately to escape her abusive fiancee, and the latter believes she has finally found love in a kind bus driver. As I've said before, I found the original to be almost completely abysmal, probably because of high expactations which were due to false marketing. In the new installment, there's a lot more laughs, much more Madea, and even though it sometimes ventures into that Lifetime movie-of-the-week territory, it's still a pretty good movie...especially if you're seeing it with a highly enthusiastic crowd like I did.