Morganalee Review of I Can Do Bad All by Myself

I Can Do Bad All by Myself (2002 Video)

Unoriginal, unfunny, untuneful, and just bad; really bad

[1/10 · 2 December 2006]

It was my distinct displeasure to be subjected to this video and to the more recent but equally bad (and largely undistinguishable) "Madea Goes to Jail" as part of a captive audience on a long-distance bus trip. Under any other circumstances, I would not have spent ten minutes of my life in the same venue as this character. As it was, I was trying to plug my ears. Black man in drag plays loud, intimidating, violent virago—it wasn't funny in 1906, and it isn't funny in 2006. I am baffled and angry that Tyler Perry has resurrected this ugly staple of an unmourned past. There was no plot. The writing was worthy of a seventh-grader. The platitudes were non-stop. And the cues for the sad attempts at original "songs" were so obvious that I almost wept, because I knew that another assault on my ears was coming. The poisoning to death of a neighbor's dog is amusing, so much so that it gets ten minutes (it seemed at least that long) of exposition as a "joke"? Young black girls are prostituted by their own mothers or fathers or both so often that this plot device showed up in two out of two of these videos? When are black people going to stop celebrating violence, stop whooping in delight at the violent punishment of children? When are black people going to stop gyrating in orgiastic delirium at the mere mention of "de Lawd"? And where did black writers/"composers" like Perry get the idea that if you scream it loud enough, you need neither poetry, beauty, harmony, nor symmetry? We don't need violent Aunt Jemimas in 2006, and, if you value your history, your intellect, and your hearing, you don't need "Madea."