CinePals React to Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family: "I Like It a Lot"

Watching Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family left Achara Kirk and Brandon Sheiley moved and entertained in equal measure. "I feel like we went through a roller coaster of emotions," Achara said, "but I like it." She said the film worked because of how it balances its two moods: "I like that in a media movie, you're going to get the highs and the lows... peak drama lots and lots of tea just drama drama drama but then we have media and she's so funny... it's like I'm crying and then I'm laughing."

Both hosts singled out Loretta Devine's Shirley, the mother quietly battling a cancer recurrence after seven years, as the emotional core of the story. Achara said she thought Shirley "faced death with such dignity," noting how tired the character seemed and how her faith carried her through. Brandon added he wasn't sure he could handle a diagnosis that way himself, calling her acceptance remarkable given how long she'd been fighting the illness in silence from her own family.

A story about a hidden secret and a family that will not communicate

The pair traced the family's dysfunction back to one buried secret: Kimberly was abused by an uncle at twelve or thirteen, became pregnant, and her mother Shirley raised the baby as her own so Kimberly could move on, without ever telling sister Tammy the truth. That silence, they reasoned, is why Tammy resents Kimberly for seemingly getting pregnant young and irresponsibly, not knowing what actually happened. Achara said that compared to the other Tyler Perry films they had watched, this one leaned more on "horrible women" than a single villainous man, and gave more reasoning behind why characters ended up the way they did rather than making them simply cruel.

Brandon also praised the cast, mentioning he once worked with an actress named Shannon and calling her performance "stellar" given how different she is in real life: "she is very sweet... just seeing her play this role, I was like, 'oh my gosh, man,' like she's really acting like that, that's really believable." Both hosts enjoyed Madea's blunt parenting lectures and said the film's overall message, that secrets meant to protect a family can end up hurting it more, landed well by the end.

Did the film earn its emotional gut punch, or did the reveal about Kimberly's past deserve more screen time than it got?