Madea’s Destination Wedding (dir. Tyler Perry)
Certificate: 12A
Running Time: 104 mins
UK Distributor: Netflix
UK Release Date: 11 July 2025
WHO’S IN MADEA’S DESTINATION WEDDING?
Tyler Perry, Cassi Davis, Tamela Mann, David Mann, Diamond White, Taja V. Simpson, Jermaine Harris, Xavier Smalls, Walnette Santiago, Brandon Sutton
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Tyler Perry (director, writer, producer), Angi Bones and Yolanda T. Cochran (producers), Jongnic Bontemps (composer), Justyn Moro and Michael Watson (cinematographers), Larry Sexton (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Madea (Perry) heads to the Bahamas for an impromptu family wedding…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON MADEA’S DESTINATION WEDDING?
Wow. Just, wow. I am almost impressed by how much Tyler Perry has made over the years from a series of films that have been… whatever the hell this is.
Admittedly, as a Brit I am nowhere near as familiar with the Madea movies as my US counterparts (though I did see A Madea Homecoming back in 2022, and am still trying to contemplate its existence to this day), but I’m aware of their rather enormous popularity among audiences who, regardless of the often abysmal critical ratings, are dedicated enough to keep showing up for them. Yet, when you see the quality of something like Madea’s Destination Wedding, it is no less flabbergasting that these movies have lasted as long as they have, because any other franchise that is consistently putting out utter garbage like this would have been dead in the water by now.
But not Madea, who’s now on her twelfth (!) film and somehow more obnoxious than ever, in a film that is just as interminable to sit through as it is, from a critic’s perspective, utterly fascinating in how borderline unwatchable it is.
As ever, Perry directs, writes and produces in addition to starring not just as Mabel “Madea” Earlene Simmons, a cantankerous elderly woman with absolutely no filter whatsoever (much to everyone’s chagrin, including that of the viewer), but also her brother Joe – an utter horndog who’s an unholy mix of Glen Quagmire and, as alleged by a recent bombshell legal case, Tyler Perry – and his much more straightlaced son Brian. It is the latter, though, who is left shell-shocked when his daughter Tiffany (Diamond White) suddenly announces that she’s getting married to an aloof young man named Zavier (Xavier Smalls), and that the wedding is due to take place at a luxurious hotel resort in the Bahamas. At the great expense of Brian’s bank account, Madea, Joe, and their friends Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis), Cora (Tamela Mann) and Mr. Brown (David Mann) all fly out for plenty of pre-wedding chaos, with Madea’s suspicions about the validity of the union – among many other things – threatening to derail everything.
Within minutes, you get a sense of what the entire movie is going to be, with an extended opening scene where Madea and her friends bicker and stammer back and forth, move onto the next scene where even more bickering ensues, and then out of the blue something absolutely insane happens, like Madea spraying a group of carjackers with gasoline and then setting them and their getaway car on fire. And that’s all before the main title even pops up, so one can only imagine what the rest of the film is like, as filmmaker Perry settles into an all-too comfortable rhythm that is both frustrating to sit through yet mesmerising for its utter lack of restraint.
Pretty much every scene in this movie is non-stop and seemingly improvised bickering between the characters, and it goes on for what feels like an eternity because it keeps grinding the film to a complete halt so that more nonsensical riffing can occur. In fact, I’d surmise that there’s only about twenty to thirty minutes of actual plot in the whole thing, with the rest of it padded by scenes of loud and abrasive characters repeating lines of dialogue in the very same sentence, leaving you with more of a headache than the expected belly laughs.
What little plot there is – and honestly, I’m using “plot” in the loosest of terms here – amounts to one of those special episodes of a popular sitcom where the cast travels somewhere nice for a two-part season finale, except instead of laughter you get to spend the whole trip with frankly terrible people who do nothing but abuse and take advantage of people too weak-willed to stand up for themselves. It’s never funny, just mean for the sake of being mean, and even when something outrageous happens such as someone running through a glass window, there’s often no need for it, as it does little if anything at all to advance the narrative.
Perry’s direction is so all over the place that you’ll have scenes where there’s a heart-to-heart conversation going on that’s constantly being interjected by Madea and her friends making snide comments, as though they’re watching the very movie that they’re in, and have nobody, not even a member of the on-set crew, to step in and tell them to stop. It all being shot under the blandest of cinematography, with shot compositions so topsy-turvy that the camera has absolutely no idea what to do with itself, and amateur editing that looks like it was rushed through Windows Movie Maker, makes its baffling cheapness that much more obvious.
Because it is such a constant bombardment of obnoxious behaviour and unrestrained filmmaking, with next to no laughs or substantive material to latch onto, Madea’s Destination Wedding is rather rough to sit through. Even A Madea Homecoming had a few more insane and unintentionally entertaining moments than this entry, which feels so much longer and far less enjoyable, even from a so-bad-it’s-good perspective, that it’s not long before you begin thinking more about all the bad things you’ve done to deserve this dreary viewing experience. The only nice thing I have to say about it is that at least it had the decency of just going straight to Netflix, and far away from a cinema screen that a movie this badly conceived has absolutely no business being projected on.
That said, if you are a fan of these movies, and you find yourself getting the laughs they want you to have from it, then I’m truly pleased for you and am hopeful that nothing, not even this review, can take that away from you. But I can only speak for myself about the utterly distasteful fascination I have for a film, and the wider franchise that it’s a part of, that is awful in every sense yet mesmerising in how awful it can truly get.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Madea’s Destination Wedding is a mesmerizingly awful entry in filmmaker/star Tyler Perry’s ongoing franchise that is rough to sit through thanks to a cast of obnoxious and overly abrasive characters, a fundamental lack of plot, direction with little to no restraint, and a considerable lack of laughs.
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