![]() Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t foolish enough to walk into this film thinking that it would be the Tree of Life of Afro American centric familial dramas, but it is very hard to ignore how unbecoming both Perry’s dialogue and attention to plot is. While many other films could take some hints from Witness Protection’s forwardness, (Prometheus ahem), the film’s quick story line seems cheap and lazy. George can’t spend enough time with his kids because of his work, Kate misses their intimacy, their daughter Cindy (Danielle Campbell) needs some attitude adjustments and their son Howie (Devan Leos) needs some serious father son time. Witness Protection operates like clockwork and these and all of the other obstacles the Needleman’s face pretty obvious in about the first 15 minutes of the film. and is relocated to live with reoccurring Perry universe character Brian’s aunt Madea (both Brian and Madea are played by Perry). After being unknowingly implicated in a Ponzi scheme, Needleman finds himself at the mercy of the F.B.I. Witness Protection starts off with the Needleman family: wealthy, white, upper class Atlantians led by the goofy yet honorable George Needleman (Eugene Levy) and his younger counterpart Kate (Denise Richards). Unlike the steeper production budgets of $30 million plus that Eddie Murphy’s The Nutty Professor (1996), its sequel Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, or Martin Lawrence’s Big Momma’s House (2000) and Big Momma’s House 2 (2006), the more modest production values of Perry’s films and their gargantuan gains have hands down been one of the most dangerous things to happen to Afro American centric filmmaking in recent times because their low cost ushers in a time where studios (be they Lionsgate, BET, or Tyler Perry studios) have found the cheapest way to market images and ideas of African American’s to themselves and the general public, and for all those reasons, even Witness Protection’s cheap laughs can’t redeem this film or Perry’s indolent message. More notably, Diary’s achievement as a low budgeted film capable of generating great profits caused Perry’s (who only wrote his first feature) narrative style to become the new acceptable model for African American familial comedy films in the 21 st Century, apparently pleasing both studios and audiences alike. Produced on a budget of 5.5$ million, Perry’s first feature film Diary was a sweeping success as it raked in $50.6 million in the domestic box office alone. Not typically drawn to every type of hype, especially when Perry started pumping out his now well marketed African American centric films in 2006 with Diary of A Mad Black Woman, I overlooked the slew of films that Perry would release in the years that followed, but rest assured, Witness Protection has provided me with everything I need to know about Perry’s wacky envisioning of the African American elderly woman. Perry’s next film as writer-director-star, Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds, is set for release February 24 from Lionsgate.Tyler Perry’s latest familial dramedy Madea’s Witness Protection was my first foray into Perry’s strange world of entertainment, where multiple personalities and southern cooking seem to run rampant and are easily accepted. The actress, repped by ICM, manager Adam Griffin and Del Shaw Moonves, also recurs on the TV sports comedy Blue Mountain State. Richards is coming off an arc on NBC’s 30 Rock and last year and her autobiography The Real Girl Next Door hit the New York Times best-seller charts. He broke out as an actor with the Jessica Alba movie Honey. Miller, who is known for his rap work under his stage name Romeo, last appeared in Jumping the Broom, the ensemble drama directed by Salim Akil. He is repped by ICM, Anonymous Content and Morris Yorn. ![]() ![]() Levy, who has appeared in more than 50 films, will next be seen in Goon, a hockey comedy that stars Seann William Scott and Jay Baruchel, and he will reprise his role from the American Pie films in April’s American Reunion. Perry, who wrote the script and is directing, produces with Paul Hall and Ozzie Areu. ![]() Also in the cast are Doris Roberts, Devan Leos, Tom Arnold and Danielle Campbell. ![]()
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