Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail (watch the trailer here)—featuring the actor/director’s cranky matriarch character, who this time befriends a prostitute in the slammer, said Rick Florino in Artist Direct—is a “sidesplitting” comedy that “strikes a solid balance between serious and silly.”

Tyler Perry’s latest “is half madcap comedy, half soap opera,” said Rafer Guzmán in Newsday, and both “mix like oil and water in this thin concoction.” And “even with a nearly two-hour runtime, it doesn't add up to a whole movie.”

Well, “Madea's fans will rejoice in seeing her sassy ways back on the big screen,” said Geoff Berkshire in Metromix Atlanta. But Perry’s “mix of broad melodrama with broad comedy is still awkward, and fails to do justice to either half of the story here.”