Madea's Witness Protection

Fish out of water rarely fail to generate laughs, which is good news for Tyler Perry's latest diary of a mad black woman. In Witness Protection, the righteously slaphappy Madea (Perry in a dress and wig) agrees to shelter an upper-class white family whose patriarch (Eugene Levy at his most shrill) is the fall guy in a mob-linked corporate Ponzi scheme. The film's best gags – like Madea's elderly brother Joe (Perry again) trying to determine if Levy's character is his illegitimate son – stem from the resulting culture clash. The writer-director-star still hasn't learned to smoothly blend his broad comic sensibilities with his family-values sermonising, nor has Madea learned less-horrifying disciplinary strategies for those she feels need to be knocked in line. (Again saving her harshest tactics for female transgressors, she tells Danielle Campbell's back-talking teenage hellion that the girl's family has been murdered, just to teach her a lesson about valuing what you have.) Perry's out-of-costume supporting performance as an FBI agent – a foil who gets about as much screen time as the title character – suggests he may be tiring of his own drag routine, even if audiences aren't. A.A.Dowd