Directed By Tyler Perry

Starring – Tyler Perry, Cassi Davis, David Mann

The Plot – Madea’s great-grandniece, Tiffany (Diamond White), introduces her new boyfriend, Zavier (Xavier Smalls), to her family and drops the shocking news to them: that the couple is getting married in two weeks, and everybody is invited to their destination wedding in the Bahamas. Despite her mother, Debrah (Taja V. Simpson), appearing to have everything under control, the vacation is hitting some turbulence. Madea (Perry) isn’t ready to leave the country; Brian (Also Perry) doesn’t approve of his daughter’s hasty wedding or her immature fiancee; Tiffany starts to doubt Zavier; and Debrah’s acting out of character. The whole wedding smells suspicious, and all Brian wants to know is whether or not this marriage is really all that it seems.

Rated PG-13 for strong adult language, crude/sexual material, drug material, and some violence

Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Destination Wedding | Official Trailer | Netflix

POSITIVES

While it’s still true that if you’ve seen one Madea movie you’ve seen them all, “Madea’s Destination Wedding” does have some admirable merits towards its appeal that at least makes this a tolerable engagement, beginning with the impeccable chemistry of the lead trio that still serves as the heart of this franchise’s foundation. Perry, Davis and Mann not only naturally exude a lived-in bond in dynamic that serve as the spice to the movie’s integral ingredients, but also continuously commit to their characters in ways that effectively allow us to see them as the elderly juveniles that they portray, instead of the actors persisting within them, and while they’re not exactly given the kind of material that pays their faithful efforts off accordingly, there’s still an ample amount of chemistry between the trio that allows the plot to grow far more interesting whenever any of them are involved, allowing each of them to step back seamlessly into roles that they’ve each made prosperous careers out of. In addition to the return of the fore-frontal trio, the film’s production values surprisingly attain an element of big screen appeal for the Netflix property, with the combination of the studio’s budget and the beautifully exotic Bahamas resort inscribing some breathtaking scenery in the backdrops of the movie’s imagery. While this movie definitely feels like a 95-minute tourism commercial for such a brand, or at the very least an all expenses paid vacation for his closest friends, it doesn’t hurt the movie’s integrity for giving its audience so much upper class elegance to casually immerse themselves in, cementing for Perry what is easily the most beautiful presentation of the entire franchise, and one that will hopefully set a bar of permanence for future films moving forward.

NEGATIVES

Despite this being among the more tolerable Madea efforts, the film is still plagued by a lazy screenplay and paper thin characterization all surmising a predictably superfluous film that doesn’t have anything of substance to add to the fools rush in subgenre of films that have practically tripled in recent years. For this film to even reach the intended 95-minute mark, it requires an evidentially elastic stretching of its various comedic set pieces, where not only does the storytelling at the forefront of the narrative get continuously put on hold, but also the improvisation of Perry’s efforts grow tediously frustrating in trying to exploit a well that begins dry, combining efforts for one of the most painfully unfunny experiences that I have had in 2025. When the film does decide to focus on the upcoming marriage of these lovesick youths, it conjures this traditionally familiar undertaking full of time-honored tropes that effortlessly allows the audience to smell these twists and developments coming from miles away, with spontaneous conflicts that could easily be resolved with a five minute conversation, but instead prolong conflict in order to appraise some shallow speculation and uncertainty to the storytelling, between characters whom we haven’t spent a quarter of the film learning about, nor give any semblance of empathy to the headaches that they’re experiencing. It certainly doesn’t help that the acting from the supporting ensemble is overwhelmed by the kind of melodramatics that feel prominent at the beginning, middle and end of an R. Kelly music video, but it’s made worse by depicting them as the kind of selfishly naive youths that this franchise has taken ample opportunity towards humiliating, and considering the entirety of the plot centers around this wedding that takes all but the final three minutes of the film getting to, it doesn’t seem important enough to deserving our investment, and in continuously deviating between it and the endless shenanigans of the elderly characters in and around the resort, makes the whole film feel like an opportunity in individualized skits, instead of telling a compelling story, with dragging pacing to its sequencing that makes it a chore to remain faithfully invested. On chartering back to the movie’s comedic material, like previous Madea films, the script reaches for the lowest hanging fruit imaginable to boost its creativity, with telegraphed deliveries so forcefully enacted that it lacks any semblance of believability or even accidental momentum to the movie’s benefit, with these audibly prolonged bouts with uncomfortable silence that seems to be there simply to leave room for the audience to groan. While these films have never received a passing grade for me personally, I’m typically given a couple of laughs to elevate the monotony of the atmosphere, but here there’s such a consistent lack of effort to anything creative or even surprising to deviate any preconceived expectations, and considering so much of the movie’s priority seems focused on selling reservations to this luxurious resort, it’s no surprise that the dialogue or momentary instances can’t surmise anything truly memorable to the movie’s lasting longevity, producing material that is digestible enough to avoid boredom, but nothing close to maximizing on the comedy-first labeling that categorizes this installment. On the opposite side of that aforementioned intoxicating imagery, distraction lingers even still with the make-up and prosthetic designs that make-up these actor’s visual transformations, especially during noteworthy instances where a wig will be shown leaning noticeably one way, while the facial textures of these actors lack any kind of make-up detail to make them synthetically elderly. It’s one of the unintentionally funnier aspects to this franchise, as these characters who have been on-screen and a part of this franchise for twenty years have never aged noticeably a single day between them, and while not everybody watches these films for authenticity, losing myself in the depths of a character is one of the most important qualities to maintaining my undivided attention to a cinematic investment, and in that regard the film fails from the opening shot and only becomes more glaring with inconsistencies and continuity errors that convey the magnitude of this sloppy production, with the most obvious details not receiving enough attention to become naturally convincing. Finally, it goes without saying that the editing to this finished product feels desperately in need of another studio edit, especially during so many of the opening act sequences that drown on so persistently that I found myself periodically forgetting just what the plot centers around, considering so little time immediately is paid fleshing it out. As previously conveyed, the development and exploration of this arc goes unfulfilling, but worse than that excessive time is paid towards gags and situational humor that continuously hammer home the point, long after the intention is made evident, and with absolutely no urgency to the movie’s storytelling, it conjures these lingering interactions that waned incredibly on my patience, with almost this euphoric sense of relief that spawned from the eventual cuts leading to the next one.

OVERALL
“Madea’s Destination Wedding” gathers audiences for more of the same unfunny and predictable journeys centering around the most obnoxiously irredeemable characters ever elicited, and while this matrimony is periodically blessed by exotically intoxicating imagery of a lavish five star resort at its setting, the lazily lackadaisical script doesn’t commit to its vows as an entertaining diversion at streaming level, leaving audiences abandoned at the alter of expectations, with endless answers to where it all went wrong

My Grade: 3.2 or F