The folks out at Lions Gate sent on a copy of Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family: The Play, and, well, you probably already know what will happen next. And while you’ll get a few good laughs and tears out of this, this kind of minimalist production is definitely not for everybody.

Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family: The Play follows a family that’s got a lot of secrets, and Shirley’s got a big one for her family. But getting that family, with five grown children, together to spill the news is tougher than you might expect–or might understand after all. And that’s where Madea comes in to help get the brood together so Shirley can fill her children in on a secret that will alter all their lives. Not that their lives couldn’t use some altering; between financial problems, drugs, and all the secrets they’re carrying around, they could use a little dose of the life-altering secret.

It’s a mouthful of a name, and I have a few good alternate titles for it, including “Tyler Perry’s It’s So Low Budget That It’s A Play But On DVD”, “Tyler Perry’s Beating A Dead Horse”, and my personal favorite “Hey Tyler Perry, Eddie Murphy Called–He Wants His Schtick Back. Martin Lawrence Isn’t Done With It Yet”.

The problem with this gigantic stage play made DVD is that it depends on dialogue to get anywhere, as it doesn’t have much in the way of action; it doesn’t have much in the way of movement either, as the characters might move a few feet beyond their original positions on any given set. And the problem is that the dialogue here is not that great. Sure it’ll be funny in some spots, but much of the time it won’t really be much to listen to. And even when they have a good joke, like Harold and his propensity for sitting down, they’ll pummel it into the ground. But sometimes they will bring out a winner or two, and that does help things.

Considering that this play / movie has about a two and a half hour run time, though, they’re going to need a lot to fill all that time. Most of it is unnecessary and has about as much to do with the plot as a rainbow trout has to do with particle physics. For instance, at one point, they’ll break out into a gospel song for no discernable reason. They’ll just start singing. Why? I don’t know. They just will.

The second half of the movie will dissolve into a strange morass of rambling diatribes almost all staged by the Madea character, not surprisingly–at one point “Madea” actually says that she’s gone off the script. She even comments that everyone around her looks astonished and a bit confused, sporting a “deer in headlights” look.

I believe it.

The second half of the movie has about as much to do with the first half of the movie as the first half has to do with…well…once again, a rainbow trout. Madea hasn’t gone off the script, Madea, much like the lost continent of Atlantis, no longer appears on any map.

I don’t know how many times I asked, and what is the point of all this?, over the course of this movie / play. And any time you have to wonder what the point is this often, you know you’re not dealing with anything good in a narrative sense. So if you don’t mind your entertainment long, rambling and pointless, but periodically funny, then you’ll do all right. Resolution, meanwhile, will be in short supply. Present, but in short supply.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, appreciates a good laugh as much as the next anthropomorphicized ratings system, but can’t ignore the pointlessness of the whole thing and hands Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family The Play a four out of ten for being funny but not sticking to any kind of reasonable narrative.