Review: All trick, no treat, 'Tyler Perry's Boo 2! A Madea Halloween' is a shoddy, low-laugh outing

Review: All trick, no treat, ‘Tyler Perry’s Boo 2! A Madea Halloween’ is a shoddy, low-laugh outing

By Kimber Myers

Oct. 20, 2017 12:15 PM PT

The cinematic equivalent of getting Necco Wafers in your trick-or-treating bucket, “Tyler Perry’s Boo 2! A Madea Halloween” is a cheap, outdated effort for his beloved character Madea. While its predecessor at least pleased his fans, writer-director-star Perry’s latest offers few laughs and embarrassing post-production work.

When 18-year-old Tiffany (Diamond White) goes to a haunted camping site for a Halloween frat party, it’s up to her great-aunt Madea to keep her safe. Joined by scowling Hattie (Patrice Lovely), raunchy Joe (also Perry) and delightfully incomprehensible Bam (Cassi Davis), Madea will fight chainsaw-wielding madmen, a Grim Reaper and a creepy kid to make sure her grandniece and her friends survive the night.

Lovely, Davis and Perry continue to bounce off each other with enjoyable results, but the film lumbers along whenever they’re not on screen together. Careless dubbing, particularly around minimizing Madea’s cursing, distracts the audience from her dialogue.

Perry’s script seems like a bad excuse for the return of Madea, with poor pacing and pointless scenes. There’s a clear disdain for most of the characters, particularly the women who largely fall into stereotypical roles like nag, temptress or madwoman. As with the director’s other films, “Boo 2!” ends with a moral lesson, but the message rings hollow after 100 minutes of insults and old-fashioned gender politics.

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