Perry keeps it all in the 'Family'

The quarterly dividend from Tyler Perry Inc. is out, and fans/investors will be happy to see that the company has renewed its focus on its core business, putting Perry in a wig, dress and oversized glasses.

"Madea's Big Happy Family" is stuffed to the gills with Perry's mix of the sacred and the silly and a serious dose of self-help for the self-absorbed.

It's as messy as any of Perry's Madea comedies -- assorted characters doing weakly connected one-off scenes that are little more than extended riffs. And there's the feeling that Perry's ambitions are pulling him away from this character and this world. But if that's the case -- and "Big Happy Family" does seem to wrap up most everything about the extended Simmons/Brown/etc. clan of Atlanta in a neat little harangue -- at least Perry leaves it all on the court. Which is to say, he and his ensemble are funnier than they've been in ages.

Madea's niece, Shirley (Loretta Devine), is sick with "the cancer." And when she's done with her religious rationalizing -- "every day that God gives us is a gift, and when he stops giving 'em, I get to be with him," she resolves to round up her family to give them the news over a big dinner.

The joint-smoking/chain-smoking Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis, a hoot) has been her only help. But Shirley's kids are a problem. They won't sit down together.

Byron (Shad "Bow Wow" Moss) is in and out of jail, dealing with a monstrous baby mama and his new girlfriend, who insists that she be "kept."

Tammy (Natalie Desselle Reid) is a nagging shrew raising two insolent, ill-mannered brats.

It's up to Madea to climb into her ancient Cadillac, risking "carbon peroxide poisoning," to round up everyone so that their mama can say goodbye. She's got to threaten, slap straighten them out and maybe keep them all off Maury Povich's TV show -- which they all love.

Cora and Mr. Brown (Tamela J. Mann and David Mann) are also having hospital issues. This big happy family is full of fat people making diet and diabetes jokes.

Davis is the funniest of the supporting cast, though Teyana Taylor's turn as the shrieking baby mama is epic. She has a voice like Wolverine's fingernails dragging across a chalkboard.

But it is Perry who takes it on himself to comically lift the movie out of its melodramatic moments, exhaling a breathless patter of profane insults, advice and life lessons. His bit on the "traffic jam" years of life, ages 40 to 50, would make Dr. Phil jealous, and his own-your-own-actions philosophy can seem refreshing, when Madea's not hectoring this husband or that one to "be a man" and put his woman in her place.

But his jokes, all the way through to the film's outtakes, land more often than not.