Cassi Davis and Tyler Perry star in a scene from the movie "Boo 2! A Madea Halloween." The Catholic News Service classification is A-III -- adults. (CNS/Chip Bergmann, Lionsgate)

By Catholic News Service

In this follow-up to the 2016 original, writer-director Tyler Perry’s long-running muumuu-draped moral force — played by Perry himself in drag, of course — sets out to rescue her grand-niece (Diamond White) from a fraternity party held at a campground where several people had been murdered some years before. The result is very much along the lines of a live-action Scooby-Doo cartoon with the manic matriarch’s familiar companions (including Cassi Davis and Patrice Lovely) taking the place of animated sleuthing teens.

Perry’s Madea films of late have operated not on strongly limned original ideas but on the fumes of public goodwill at the memory of the character’s earlier outings. In those, she at least had some moral lesson to convey about the power of family ties and the importance of children obeying their elders. Here, her primary task is to shriek and toss off the occasional line about urinary incontinence.

A brief scene of marijuana use, fleeting crude language, two instances of the N-word. The Catholic News Service classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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