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Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All by Myself | 2009 | PG-13 | - 5.5.4

After Madea (Tyler Perry) catches three kids trying to break into her house, she sets out to take them back to the only family they have, their wayward aunt (Taraji P. Henson), who at first wants nothing to do with the children. However, she changes her mind with a little influence from a helpful handyman (Adam Rodriguez) and the positive influence of the local church. Also with Brian J. White, Hope Olaide Wilson, Mary J. Blige, Gladys Knight, Marvin Winans, Frederick Siglar, Kwesi Boakye and Randall Taylor. Directed by Tyler Perry. [1:53]

SEX/NUDITY 5 - A man grabs a teen girl's arm, leads her into another room, corners the girl against a counter and attempts to push himself on top of her, pushing at her clothing and trying to kiss her while she screams and tries to push him away; the man says that he will provide "All the drugs she might want" and that the girl "Is getting what she wanted," and then he is violently interrupted.
 A shirtless man and a woman kiss passionately. A man and woman kiss passionately and the man wraps his arms around the woman. A man and woman share a passionate kiss, and the man pulls her closer to him.
 A man menaces a girl in her early teens, making a crude sexual reference and offering the girl a chocolate bar while looking at her a sexual manner; the girl ignores his advances. A man accuses a girl of "tempting" him, and tells a woman and a man that the young girl had offered to have sex with him for money. A teen girl accuses a man of attempted rape. A woman recalls molestation when she was young (she does not go into any details), when talking about an attempted rape on a teen girl. A girl thanks a woman for believing her accusations of a man attempting to rape her and the woman tells the girl that she had experienced molestation. A woman yells at a man and accuses a man of being a pedophile and a child molester, being interested in a girl, or young boys.
 A woman wears a tight, form-fitting outfit, exposing cleavage while performing on stage. A crowded nightclub features women wearing form-fitting, short, and low cut dresses. A woman wearing a tank top and short shorts answers the door and the man at the door looks at her in shock. A woman is shown wearing a short, form-fitting dress, a woman wears a cleavage-exposing top, and a woman wears pants that are very tight and form-fitting and clearly define her buttocks. A woman wears a short, form-fitting dress with a large keyhole exposing her lower back. A woman wears a man's shirt (her upper thigh is exposed).
 A woman, performing on stage while wearing a short dress with a low-cut front, dances suggestively before a crowded room by thrusting her hips toward a microphone stand.
 A woman crawls into bed with a shirtless man and wraps her arms around him; the man pushes the woman away. A woman, lying in bed, jokes with a shirtless man about his wife and kisses his arm and shoulder; the man then stands up. A woman lies in bed next to a shirtless man.
 A woman kisses a man on the cheek. A man kisses a woman's cheek. A man holds a woman in his arms to comfort her. A woman and man hold hands and smile at one another.
 A man tells a woman that his wife is pregnant and asks her if she is, she says she is not, and attempts to kiss him. A man jokes that he does not "make love" to his "buddies" after a woman asks him if he feels friendly love or sexual love for her. During a verbal disagreement, a woman accuses another woman of having an affair with a married man. A woman and a man discuss whether the woman loves another man and responds that she is unsure, but she keeps him around because he pays the bills. A man jokes that love is "being too tired to go to work in the morning." A man opens a door and tells another man that there is "nothing to be found in this bedroom" (referring to the woman inside). An elderly man jokes to three children that their grandmother had a job as a sex worker, since only sex workers are gone for days at a time while they are "working."
 A woman, covered with a sheet, is in bed watching as a shirtless man zips up his pants and swings open a bathroom door; we then hear a flushing toilet.

VIOLENCE/GORE 5 - A man grabs a teen girl's arm, leads her into another room, corners the girl against a counter and attempts to push himself on top of her, pushing at her clothing and trying to kiss her while she screams and tries to push him away; the man says that he will provide "All the drugs she might want" and that the girl "Is getting what she wanted," and then he is violently interrupted.
 A man sexually assaulting a teen girl is struck in the head with a baseball bat, he is grabbed and pinned against a counter, punched, slammed onto a kitchen table that shatters, and when he is on the floor he's struck repeatedly in the head (the man's face is covered in blood).
 A woman holds a portable stereo, plugged into the wall, over a filled bathtub with a man in it: she slowly lowers it, placing it on the side of the tub, drops the stereo in the water, and a bright flash is seen causing the man in the tub to shoot out of the water (his bare buttocks are visible momentarily) and fall to the ground (he's fine).
 A boy tells an elderly man, "I hate you"; the man tells the boy, "I'm about to choke you out," puts his hands around the boy's neck, attempts to choke him, and the man then tells the boy that he is going to "beat him down" and chokes him again. After catching three young children breaking into their home, an older man and an older woman attack them and begin to violently strike them on the head and torso with their fists and a cane.
 A teen girl kicks a man in the back as he kneels on the floor, and his face is covered in blood. A man is shown in a bathtub with a blood-covered face, saying that he believes his nose is broken. An older woman is shown closing her eyes and presumably dying. A girl holds a young, sick-looking boy, and rocks him while sitting in front of two vials of medication.
 A man grabs a woman's arm and tells her that she is not allowed to leave; she shakes his arm off and walks out the door. A man grabs a young boy's arm, twists it, and shouts at the boy to sit down immediately.
 An older woman slams her hand violently on a table to get the attention of the people surrounding her, startling them. A man shouts at a woman and angrily pounds on the table in front of her.
 An elderly woman threatens three children by stomping, and she says that she will "shank" them, that if they have a cell phone that she will shove the cell phone down a girl's throat, and that she will rearrange the children's organs (using anatomical terms including urethra and femur) until the only thing they will be capable of doing will be "running and peeing"; the woman then raises her hand up to the girl and shouts, "I will pimp slap you." A woman shouts, "I hope what you're stealing is worth a cap in your a**." An elderly woman shouts at three children, saying to the oldest, a teen girl, "I oughta shank you."
 A man accuses a teen girl of "tempting" him, and tells a woman and a man that the girl had offered to have sex with him for money. A teen girl accuses a man of attempted rape. A man threatens that he will send another man "back to Mexico in a pine box" if he does not leave immediately and the man walks away. A man threatens a presumably nude man (only upper chest is seen) that he has two minutes to pack his belongings and get out. An older woman grabs the arm of a teen girl and pulls her close, threatening to "punch her out" if her attitude does not improve. A teen girl accuses a man of stealing furniture, and then shouts at a woman. A man threatens to kill a teen girl if she continues to misbehave. An older woman shouts that she will "choke out" a child. An older woman threatens to "swat" three children. A woman screams loudly to get the attention of a man. A man shouts at a woman, accusing her of speaking out of turn. An older woman awakes when she hears breaking glass and crashing sounds, and she says that she is known for being a violent person, and having previously spent time in jail so the burglars must be confused. A woman shouts angrily at a man standing at her door, after his knocks had awoken her. A woman screams at three children after a knock to her door wakes her. A woman shouts at a teen girl for slamming the door while the woman was attempting to sleep and calls the girl a name. A woman tells three children that their caretaker had died and one of them verbally lashes out against the woman. An older woman threatens that she will make three children "go missing" if they misbehave while they are in her company. An older man and older woman verbally threaten and berate three children in a comical tone in several scenes. An older woman tells a teen girl that she will "one over" her if her attitude doesn't change and that no one will ever love her if she continues to have a sour attitude and that she will end up a bitter old woman. A woman says before a group of children that their mother is dead. A woman, in the company of three children and two adults, tells a teen girl that the girl's mother had died of a drug overdose and had been a junkie and that the girl was following in her footsteps. An older man tells a woman that her mother had died, alone on the bus after having a brain aneurysm, and shows the woman an urn with her mother's ashes in it. An older man makes a snide remark comparing children to roaches, in that if you feed them once they will continue to return. A man tells a woman about three children having nightmares and night terrors. A man asks a teen girl if she is on drugs and the girl says that she is not. An older woman says that she feels like she has "O.J. and Michael Vick" in her house. A man tells a woman that he had a harsh childhood, including being sold into child labor at the age of seven and being forced to work all day long in the fields and coming home to be beaten and that he had to recruit other children for child labor as well.
 A teen girl runs down the street away from an angry man, who's shouting at her; another man grabs the girl and holds her as the man who was chasing her accuses her of stealing from his store. An obviously inebriated woman stumbles in front of a car, which has to come to an abrupt stop. An older man holds a butter knife in a mock-threatening gesture in front of two young boys.

LANGUAGE 4 - 10 anatomical terms, 5 mild obscenities, over 10 racial slurs, name-calling (fool, crazy, antique, Big Bird, hooker, snitch, loco, ugly, junkie, heifer, dumb, dumber, dumbest, dumberist, crackhead, caveman, selfish, drunk, evil, nappyheaded), exclamations (shut-up), 2 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - A man mumbles in his sleep "roll this joint up," a woman asks a young boy if his caretaker is "on the stuff," a teen girl is accused of stealing needles to use for drugs (we find out later that they were for administering diabetic insulin), a teen girl tells a woman that a lot of terrible things can happen to a child if his/her mother did drugs while she was pregnant. In a room there are alcoholic beverages, ashtrays and cigarettes, a room is shown littered with empty alcohol bottles, cigarette packs, and ashtrays full of smoked cigarettes, a woman holds a glass of a presumably alcoholic beverage while performing in front of a crowd and sitting a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray is by her side, an inebriated woman stumbles in front of a car, a woman takes a swig from a presumably alcoholic drink and hiccups, a nightclub emcee tells a crowded nightclub, "The more you drink the better I look and the better your date looks," a woman tells a female bartender that if she "really loves her" that she would pour her another drink and the bartender disagrees, so the woman shoves a bottle of alcohol into her purse, and a waitress orders drinks for a table at a bar. A woman lights and smokes a cigarette in front of three children after being asked not to smoke since one of the children had asthma, a woman smokes a cigarette while sitting at a bar with a bottle of alcohol and empty glasses, a woman lights and smokes a cigarette in a nightclub, a woman lights and smokes a cigarette in several scenes, a man lights and smokes a cigarette in several scenes and a man accuses a woman of smoking and drinking too much.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Alcoholism, Tuskegee experiments, child abandonment, death, faithfulness in marriage, sanctity of marriage, immigration, racism, nicotine addiction, irresponsibility, taking drugs while pregnant and the after effects thereof, theft, retribution, faith, reliance on the kindness of others, spousal abuse, molestation, pedophilia, drug addiction, diabetes, asthma, intolerance.

MESSAGE - Sometimes the unexpected and unwanted, bring about the greatest gift.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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