Tyler Perry's Boo 2! A Madea Halloween

Multihyphenate filmmaker Tyler Perry once again trots out that silver wig, those oversized Tootsie eyeglasses, and another blousy house dress (not to mention a sensible handbag) to become the sharp-tongued busybody Madea in his Halloween-themed sequel to last year’s moderately successful scare comedy featuring a character who’s become the ghost of her former self. Be forewarned that Boo 2! is almost exactly the same movie as its middling predecessor, except this time around, the bugaboos terrorizing the gullible young folk are a couple of chain saw-waving maniacs and pasty twin girls resembling that spectral chick from The Ring. If someone other than Perry himself had written and directed this movie, he’d have ample grounds to sue them for plagiarism.

Returning for this rehash effort are Madea’s dumpy Tweedledee and Tweedledum sidekicks, Bam (Davis) and Hattie (Lovely, so hammy she should come with cheese), as well as those Chippendales frat boys who constantly flex their sizable guns to remind you why they were cast. Perry once more pulls triple duty as the hallelujer-spouting matriarch, her high-as-a-kite older brother, Joe, and her straight-arrow nephew, Brian, who (like last time) can’t seem to control his insufferable ingrate of a teenage daughter (White). Unlike Eddie Murphy’s wonderfully precise incarnations of the Klump family in The Nutty Professor franchise, Perry doesn’t exert much effort in these multiple roles. The improvisational feel of his earlier performances as this law-breaking octogenarian built like a linebacker felt somewhat liberating, but now that loosey-goosiness just seems lazy, primed for nothing more than a cut of the gross.

The laughs are few and far between, though the low-comedy sight of Perry’s big-boned grandma running in full shriek tickles, with that fat suit bouncing and flouncing in every direction. (The way Madea sashays up to one of the ghouls on a deserted road is even funnier, though it makes no sense whatsoever. Narrative logic is not Perry’s strong point.) But her sibling Joe’s obsession with pimps and ho’s is tired stuff, and a throwaway line about a bad driver running over a kitten in her haste to arrive at a party is in outright bad taste, regardless of whether you’re an animal lover. One can only hope Perry will move on to another holiday and perhaps take the effort to reconnect with the crazy old-lady persona that has served him so well. Until then: Oh hail, no.