Tyler Perry & Cast Shine In I Can Do Bad All By Myself

When Madea (Tyler Perry), America’s favorite pistol-packing grandma, catches sixteen-year-old Jennifer (Hope Olaide Wilson) and her two younger brothers (Kwesi Boakye and Frederick Sigler) looting her home, she decides to take matters into her own hands and delivers the young delinquents to the only relative they have: their aunt April (Taraji P. Henson). A heavy-drinking nightclub singer who lives off of her married boyfriend Randy (Brian J. White), April wants nothing to do with the kids. But her attitude begins to change when Sandino (Adam Rodriguez), a handsome Mexican immigrant looking for work, moves into April’s basement room. Making amends for his own troubled past, Sandino challenges April to open her heart. And April soon realizes she must make the biggest choice of her life: between her old ways with Raymond and the new possibilities of family, faith…and even true love in I Can Do Bad All By Myself.

I Can Do Bad All By Myself, Tyler Perry's endearing adaptation of the melo-comedic stage play that introduced his alter ego Madea, is a double shot of Saturday-night lowdown chased by a cheery chug of Sunday-morning uplift. Starring that spitfire Taraji P. Henson as a lounge singer who resists assuming guardianship of her late sister's children, the film is a variety show that successfully prompts laughs, tears, and song, culminating in heaps o' hope. The laughs come mostly from Perry in the guises of the silver-haired, profanely funny Atlanta granny Madea and her brother, Joe, whose Atlanta home is jacked by unlikely robbers. In a scene comparable to classic Groucho Marx and Mae West, with irreverent reverence Madea consoles one of the attempted robbers with a boisterous sermon conflating Noah, Jonah, and every other scriptural aqua-man.

The tears come mostly from April (Henson), the aunt too selfish to care for her niece and nephews, and the children unwanted by their family. The songs, which nicely amplify the film's themes of feminism, faith, and family, are delivered by Henson, Mary J. Blige (as a sister lounge singer), and Gladys Knight (Pipless, as a church lady), whose pipes still thrill.Hope is around the corner. Literally. For April's rowhouse is thisclose to the Baptist church that she once attended. The pastor there (Marvin Winans) is determined to shepherd her back. So is one of the parishioners, Sandino (Adam Rodriguez), a handsome Colombian refugee who proves to be catnip for both believers and fallen-away Christians. A dramatist of the old school, Perry makes films in which stormy weather is inevitably followed by blue skies. Though no one would cite him for the cinematic qualities of his visually pedestrian films, Perry is a master conductor of emotions. He elicits a top-notch performance from Henson, who is given more range here than in Talk to Me and Benjamin Button. And as foulmouthed Madea, he himself is irresistibly funny, an improbable mix of the madcap and the merciful. Highly enjoyable and emotional, this one gets a 4 on my "Go See"scale.