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News / Columns / Critics Consensus
Critics Consensus: Fired Up! Gets A Bronx Cheer
Plus, guess the Tomatometer for Madea Goes to Jail.
by Tim Ryan | February 19, 2009
Discuss Article

This week at the movies, we've got spirited scoundrels (Fired Up!, starring Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen) and septuagenarian scofflaws (Madea Goes to Jail, starring Tyler Perry and Derek Luke). What do the critics have to say?

23%
Template Image
Rotten

Fired Up!

If you're going to make a raunchy cheerleading comedy, you're going to need plenty of energy and some good jokes. Unfortunately, critics say Fired Up! is short on laughs and pep.The film stars Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen as a pair of high school football stars that decide to join the painfully inept cheerleading squad as a ploy to meet girls. Naturally, the lads learn a thing or two about love and competitiveness in the process. The pundits say Fired Up! does little with a limited premise, delivering a few chuckles but ultimately coming across as alternately shopworn and mean-spirited.


28%
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Rotten

Madea Goes to Jail

There are two ways of looking at the evolution of Tyler Perry's career: either mainstream critics are slowly coming around to his brand of comedic melodrama and spiritual uplift, or he's getting better at his craft. Regardless of the answer, we'll have to wait for the pundits' evaluations of Madea Goes to Jail, since it wasn't screened prior to release. Madea stars Perry as the irrepressible (and slammer-bound) matriarch, whose no-nonsense candor serves to inspire her damaged fellow inmates. Kids, ask your parole officer for help in guessing that Tomatometer!


Also opening this week in limited release:

  • Must Read After My Death, a wrenching documentary of family dysfunction, is at 100 percent.
  • Andrzej Wajda's Katyn, a drama about Soviet atrocities in Poland in World War II, is at 93 percent.
  • Eleven Minutes, a documentary about Project Runway winner Jay McCarroll's first runway show, is at 44 percent.

Related Items
Movie: Eleven Minutes
Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail
Katyn
Must Read After My Death
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Comments (1-19 of 19 posts) | Reply
jokerboy1991
jokerboy1991 writes:
on Feb 19 2009 04:52 PM

OH LORDY MY FAVORITE, TYLA MUTH F^CKN PERRY! HALLELUJAH! God I hate Tyler Perry, why do people watch his movies?!? Why don't they just watch NBC at around 11 am and you'll see better quality on those frickking soaps.

(Reply to this)
Mr. Bo Ziffer
Mr. Bo Ziffer writes:
on Feb 19 2009 05:34 PM

Tyler Perry's movies just come off as unoriginal to me. Like I said on a different post, they feel like a patchwork of Nutty Professor, Big Momma's House, and Roscoe Jenkins. I neither love him nor hate him, he's just kind of . . . there. Like the FLIX channel.

(Reply to this)
man in the water
man in the water writes:
on Feb 19 2009 07:23 PM

Dont like Perry either. NO interest in this one.

Madea goes to Jail: 25%


(Reply to this)
Speaker for the Films
Speaker for the Films writes:
on Feb 19 2009 07:31 PM

Madea-32%



(Reply to this)
kyle x.
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on Feb 19 2009 07:43 PM

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(Reply to this)
ledawg1138
ledawg1138 writes:
on Feb 19 2009 08:17 PM

In reply to this comment (#2331576)
Exactly! Tyler Perry is releasing the same movie again and again! It was never funny when he dressed up as a women, it's not funny now.

"Fired Up" looks lame. And kyle x., you suck!


(Reply to this)
frogboy
frogboy writes:
on Feb 19 2009 09:32 PM

I find Tyler Perry's shtick to be offensive - not only because it's condescending to non-Christians or that it's largely homophobic - but because it is horribly executed drivel. The African American community has risen above the likes of Tyler Perry and deserves far better. It's time to send middling Media packing. This is blaxploitation at its worst. And unimaginative at that!

(Reply to this)
thereign
thereign writes:
on Feb 19 2009 09:41 PM

All I know is, after watching the Review Revue, I don't know what the hell's coming out this weekend, thanks to Jen Yamato's outfit.

(Reply to this)
nathanpoitras
nathanpoitras writes:
on Feb 19 2009 10:28 PM

The only thing worse than a Tyler Perry play is a Tyler Perry movie. God he sucks it hard!

(Reply to this)
Tyrant
Tyrant writes:
on Feb 20 2009 12:08 AM

Tyler Perry's new crap i see being around a 15%, I'm being generous.

@Fired Up = A COMEDY THAT'S NOT FUNNY OR ORIGINAL, WHAT A SHOCKER! Oh where have the days of funny/quality comedies(and horror movies too) gone.


(Reply to this)
mssk8erboy
mssk8erboy writes:
on Feb 20 2009 08:47 AM

I can't stand tyler perry, 23%

-MIKE


(Reply to this)
brandon s.
brandon s. writes:
on Feb 20 2009 09:12 AM

Never seen a Tyler Perry movie and, judging from the previews and what I've read on here/reviews I don't think I ever want to. Fired Up looks like yet another waste of studio time in a desperate attempt to draw in the brainless masses for another harmless and unfunny "comedy."

(Reply to this)
Kameron D.
Kameron D. writes:
on Feb 20 2009 09:50 AM

Madea Goes to Jail - 29% (Based on the Tomatometers of his other movies)

(Reply to this)
Hans M.
Hans M. writes:
on Feb 20 2009 11:33 AM

I'd guess 20 % on Madea Goes to Jail. Never seen his stuff and most probably never will (most probably because I'd never seen a Jean Claude Van Damme movie until I saw JCVD a few weeks ago-- very cool, it was!).

Ebert has a great review for Must Read After My Death, but it feels like a renter for me.

Otherwise, nothing new this week sparks my interest. We hope to see either Coraline in 3D or Doubt this weekend.

I caught Gommora in NYC this week. It was amazing. It reminded me of City of God.


(Reply to this)
whitey_mcwhite
whitey_mcwhite writes:
on Feb 20 2009 12:25 PM

I've never seen a Tyler Perry movie, but I remember working in a video store when all the "plays" or whatever for all these movies he's putting out now were coming in and judging by the cases they all looked horrible. If you are a black film maker who isn't just going to make a good movie without a specific message to the black community, or you're not going to make Do the Right Thing, you shouldn't even bother. (This is coming from a black dude.) 10%

(Reply to this)
hatingvindiesel
hatingvindiesel writes:
on Feb 20 2009 03:09 PM

In reply to this comment (#2331843)
Madea: 41 %

(Reply to this)
JRW1980
JRW1980 writes:
on Feb 21 2009 09:38 AM

Fired Up looks okay. I might go see it out of boredom over the weekend just because I will need my movie fix. As far as another Tyler Perry comedy: Please stop! As everyone on here has repeatedly stated, it's unoriginal and unfunny. I've tried to watch his comedies before but I just couldn't stand them. If you want something good from him, go see the Family that Preys. It's very different than any of his other films and is actually very good.

(Reply to this)
gm1200
gm1200 writes:
on Feb 22 2009 01:52 PM

In reply to this comment (#2334814)
Wow...you guys sure aren't in Tyler Perry's demographic...that much is obvious.

First of all, as a "black" film-maker, Perry is easily the best there is. Note that I don't mean as a film-maker who is black, but rather as a film-maker who tailors his movies specifically to the black crowd. What black folks find funny is obviously way different than what other folks find funny, cause while I agree Madea is not even remotely humorous to me...all you hear in an auditorium where she/he/it is on screen is tons of laughter.

As for the guy who found it offensive to non-religious folks...who cares? So you're offended by people who believe in something...deal with it. Or better yet, don't watch movies by film-makers who don't share your belief system. I'm on the other side of your argument. I consider Perry to be a pretty weak example of the Christian film-maker considering he seems ok with gays...but I guess he has to be one of the hypocritical gay Chrisitians or he wouldn't be able to be a professional Tranny.

So to all you guys who diss on Perry's movies...quit watching them! Cause he won't quit making them as long as they keep banking like they are.


(Reply to this)
ledawg1138
ledawg1138 writes:
on Feb 22 2009 03:19 PM

In reply to this comment (#2336971)
"Or better yet, don't watch movies by film-makers who don't share your belief system."

Well ,if that were the case, only Scientoligist would watch movies!


(Reply to this)
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