Who'd You Rather: Paul Blart or Madea?

If you had to pick one to get rid of the other, which would you choose? Over the weekend, $41 million was thrown at the feet of Tyler Perry, whose Madea Goes to Jail was clearly the number one movie over that time span, outperforming the rest of the top five all by itself. It's also the biggest opening weekend of the young year, a record that should hold for another two weeks. Not too far off Madea's pace, though, is the ever-alert security guard, Paul Blart, which has the year's third best debut performance. Yes, the opening weekends of these films accounted for more money spent than the lifetime grosses of three of the five Best Picture nominees combined. Of course, comedy is a funny game, and not funny ha ha. How can Arrested Development last only two-and-a- half seasons while Charlie Sheen becomes the highest paid actor on TV? But Paul Blart: Mall Cop was not supposed to be a $100 million movie, and its $30 million debut was about twice as much as most prognosticators gave it credit for. Madea was widely believed to be this weekend's top choice, but again, most predictions had it in the $25 million area, not $15 million above that. Clearly, each of these larger than life characters have resonated with tons of people, not all of whom, we'll argue, require a lot to be entertained. And while all of us will most likely have to encounter more installments of both Paul Blart and Madea, which one would you rather see again? It's the whole Lady or the Tiger exercise, the unsolvable problem: If you had to choose only one, which way would you lean? Personally, I'd go Paul Blart. I've seen Kevin James do good things before, and this was only the first time he's played the character. Maybe there's some potential left. And the problem with Blart wasn't him. It was just a mediocre script. Tyler Perry has done the Madea thing a few times, and as a wise movie sheriff once said, fifteen is my limit on schnitzengruben.

Comments

[knives]

Blart's a more pedestrian idiocy so I say we keep him alive.

[Michael]

Kevin James or Tyler Perry? That's a no-brainer. Blart.

[Get The Big Picture]

Finally, we agree!

[Lillian James]

Oh definitely keep Blart.

[Julian Francis]

We should really put our money towards Confessions of a Shopaholic. Isla Fisher is too underrated, even if the movie isn't so much.

I'm going to go see Madea as we speak.

[MRPigg]

Kevin James is appealing most of the time. Factory churned out bad "comedies" are rarely the fault of the actors.
Tyler Perry's success is simply insulting.

[Jeremy]

I haven't seen the movie, but I can just see Blart being accepted into the Academy and becoming an honest to goodness cop. Then we'd be able to hear the commander of his unit hollar, "BLAAAART!" Ah, comedy...