Special Matriarchal Lessons - The New York Times What makes it a Madea Christmas? In the latest visit from Tyler Perry's multimillion-dollar-grossing action-hero auntie, this modern-day Malaprop helps save a school, an interracial relationship, a bullied boy and a divided family, all while making fast friends with the white-trash royalty Larry the Cable Guy. She'd save a man from a burning wreck, but somebody else takes care of that. Laden with lessons but relatively low-key, "Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas" keeps a couple of stories roasting and turning on the fire. A schoolteacher in the sticks, Lacey (Tika Sumpter), is pretending to her city mother, Eileen (Anna Maria Horsford), that her white boyfriend, Conner (Eric Lively), is her farmhand. Meanwhile, her school faces a budget crunch with a jubilee party looming, and townsfolk are pressuring the mayor. The only sane, diplomatic way to resolve the situation is for Madea to join Eileen on a surprise visit to her daughter, along with Lacey's ex from high school, a fund-raising broker. Also in attendance are Conner's enlightened hillbilly parents, Buddy (Larry the Cable Guy) and Kim (Kathy Najimy). The affectionate couple bond with Madea by being endearingly inappropriate. That's just a loose framework for imparting the eternal values of brotherly love, openness and running off at the mouth. With the writer-director Adam McKay's popular brand of improvisation-aided absurdism returning next week in "Anchorman 2," it bears repeating that Mr. Perry is an inveterate ad-libber. At times, it seems as if he must have altered the course of the plot with a stray crazy word. Each new installment of Madea offers the mild perk of watching who's allowed to respond (Larry the Cable Guy, Ms. Najimy and Ms. Horsford all roll along), and who's supposed to keep a straight face through the storm of sass (Ms. Sumpter, for example). That said, Madea is not at her most liberatingly loony here, nor does the high-wire potential amount to much (unless you count a Nativity tale rephrased in terms of dogs, or the mention of "Beasts of the Southern Wild"). Despite the Southern origins of her name in "my dear," Mr. Perry's character has in the past evoked the unbridled energies and perverse justice of another Medea, with an "e." But her Christmas outing finds her less demonic than mischievous. There's real talk but not smack downs, aside from holiday job rage in the department store opening (which features an ambitiously extended tracking shot). Instead, Madea presides over congenial antiracist messages in red-state country, which is represented somewhat frugally in terms of locations. Eileen turns out to have the most hidebound attitudes, passed on to Lacey in the form of guilty secrecy; the cardboard Conner and his wisecracking parents are models of copacetic colorblindness. With a character who can essentially say and do whatever she wants, you might expect a bit more. But Mr. Perry's Christmas movie is like a requisite Christmas album, and, sure enough, his customary musical finale comes with a sallow-looking farm boy raising "Mary, Did You Know?" to the heavens. Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas Opened on Friday. Written and directed by Tyler Perry, based on his stage play; director of photography, Alexander Gruszynski; edited by Maysie Hoy; music by Christopher Young; produced by Mr. Perry, Ozzie Areu and Matt Moore; production design by Eloise C. Stammerjohn; costumes by Johnetta Boone; released by Lionsgate. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. WITH: Tyler Perry (Madea), Kathy Najimy (Kim), Chad Michael Murray (Tanner), Anna Maria Horsford (Eileen), Tika Sumpter (Lacey), Eric Lively (Conner), J R Lemon (Oliver), Alicia Witt (Amber), Lisa Whelchel (Nancy Porter) and Larry the Cable Guy (Buddy).