Family reunion isn’t a party

Tyler Perry had a large following in the African-American community with his stage plays and tapped notoriety with a wider audience last year when the film version of his “Diary of A Mad Black Woman” was a box-office hit.

The challenge of doing this with your first movie is repeating that success with the next effort, especially because expectations are so high. Although he tries with “Madea’s Family Reunion,” (rated PG-13), the result is disjointed and disappointing.

Perry once again plays Madea, the wise, experienced and primarily comical matron whose simple but helpful advice is what her troubled extended family needs. Her niece Lisa (Rochelle Aytes) is beautiful and engaged to rich investment banker, Carlos (Blair Underwood), who we learn very early on hits her.

Lisa’s half-sister Vanessa (Lisa Arrindell Anderson) is a single mom with two kids and a heavy distrust of men. When a handsome bus driver named Frankie (Boris Kodjoe) pursues her, she reluctantly agrees to go out with him.

The ladies’ men troubles can easily be attributed to their vain, status-conscious mother, Victoria (Lynn Whitfield), who is totally unlikable and looks out only for herself, with no regrets or remorse of how she sacrificed both her daughters’ happiness to sustain her own greed.

If you saw Perry’s first film, then most of this will sound familiar. The major problem is that it is much too familiar. The originality that came with the first film has not evolved and what once was fresh has now become stale. In trying to help her newly awarded and problematic foster child, Nikki (Keke Palmer), Madea’s little gems of, “It ain’t what people call you. It’s what you answer to,” are sweet but seem recycled.

When Myrtle (Cicely Tyson, reprising her earlier role) tries to empower the young adults in the large gathering to “take your place” and do something with their lives at the big family reunion, it comes off as much too preachy instead of inspiring. It’s a great message for anyone, but ends up sounding contrived in this setting.

The same writing problem with dialogue extends to the lack of character development. Again, you can look at several main characters and find a close corollary in Perry’s previous film.

When Vanessa thinks Frankie only wants sex and has no future thought of staying with her, his sincere response that “some men come for restoration” is nicely uttered, but could have been delivered by that similar guy in the other film.

The good people are good and the bad people are really bad. Unfortunately, that’s as far as it goes.

The quality that helps the film is the acting, which is fine, but when people are dealing with a weak script, it doesn’t give them a lot to work with.

Maya Angelou has a small part as May, one of the extended family members, but there’s no big revelation because you feel as though she’s playing herself.

Occasional moments of broad comedy and touching drama can’t sustain an entire story when the continuity needed to hold them together is missing. Perry needs more than a “been there, done that” effort to keep the audience coming around.