Tyler Perry likes his melodrama broad and his comedy broader. In the insistently uplifting I Can Do Bad All by Myself, the former comes courtesy of April (Henson), a selfish boozehound nightclub singer who learns—predictably, and after musical numbers by Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige—to do good via caring for her sister’s kids and renting a room to a hunky Colombian mechanic. The laughs, meanwhile, are delivered by cross-dressing Perry’s sassy grandma Madea, whose wild threats of violence to children and adults alike are the only things that sporadically lighten up this narratively and grammatically dim redemption pap.—Nick Schager
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