As the holidays approach, we’re all getting ready to sit down and watch our favorite festive movies. Ahead of the festive season, one of Tyler Perry‘s biggest critical flops, which has gained a die-hard cult following in the years since its release, just landed on a new streaming home. Tyler Perry might now be best known for creating some of the most divisive Netflix Original shows and movies, with recent outings including Ruth & Boaz, Beauty in Black, Straw, The Six Triple Eight, Tyler Perry’s Duplicity, and Tyler Perry’s Divorce in Black (and they’re all in the last two years). But it’s a fan favorite from Perry’s cult comedy franchise that’s now streaming on HBO Max.
A Madea Christmas is now available to stream on HBO Max. Tyler Perry wrote, directed, and starred in A Madea Christmas as the eponymous Madea. The Madea franchise has included some bizarre entries, like Madea Goes to Jail, and Madea’s Witness Protection, but A Madea Christmas (as the title suggests) puts a bit of Yuletide spring in the iconic matriarch’s step. The film was released in 2013, and actually started life as a stage play, which Perry performed and released on DVD in 2011. Two years later, the story was expanded and turned into a full-length feature film. The official synopsis reads:
“Madea (Tyler Perry) accompanies her niece, Eileen (Anna Maria Horsford), to the small town of Buck Tussel to pay a surprise visit to Eileen’s daughter, Lacey (Tika Sumpter), who has refused to come home for Christmas. The real reason Lacey is avoiding her judgmental mother is that she has secretly married Connor (Chad Michael Murray), a white classmate from college. When Eileen and Madea arrive at Lacey’s farm, she tells them that Connor is an employee, but her lie soon spins out of control.”
Tyler Perry has never been a critical darling, and A Madea Christmas continued that trend. The film holds a ghastly 21% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. However, as is the case with many of Tyler Perry’s projects, his die-hard fan base came to the rescue, as A Madea Christmas holds a far stronger 70% audience score.
A Brief History of Madea’s Strange Adventures
Just like A Madea Christmas, Madea herself began life as a character on the stage. I Can Do Bad All by Myself was the name of Perry’s 2000 stage play in which Madea debuted. From there, the character appeared and subsequently starred in several films.
Madea’s first movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, was released in 2005. Since then, Perry has reprized the role of Madea in 12 more movies in the past two decades. 2025 saw the release of Perry’s most recent Madea film, Madea’s Destination Wedding, which landed directly on Netflix in July. However, even audiences turned on Perry for this one. The film holds a poor audience rating of 36% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an atrocious critics’ score of just 11%.
- Release Date
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December 13, 2013
- Runtime
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99 minutes
