Not funny mummy (Big Momma's House (DVD))

Member Name: roger_smith

Product:	Big Momma's House (DVD)
Date:	04/10/00 (14 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quite funny

Disadvantages: Seen it all before

Instinct can tell you pretty easily: Big Momma's House is not going to be a good movie. But you may decide to chance it anyway, if you're like me and have already seen everything at the multiplex. And you'll find yourself laughing a few times -- five, six times; upwards of a dozen if you're drunk. In the end, though, Big Momma's House is a dumbed-down mess of a movie that can't decide if it wants to be a gross-out comedy, an action flick or a conventional romance.

What's more, with its single-handed focus on creating a Martin Lawrence vehicle, it wastes some damn good actors. I'm not saying Paul "Pig Vomit" Giamatti hasn't made his share of rotten movies, but as Lawrence's FBI sidekick, he's given nothing to do but get kneed in the crotch, make horrible jokes and stall people so they don't discover Lawrence is masquerading as Big Momma. Nia Long, gorgeous and talented, is the love interest and comedic foil who is called upon to confuse an erection for a flashlight. And Terrence Howard, who had the toughest role in The Best Man, pops up every few scenes to act frightening as the villain we know won't actually reach our protagonists until the last reel.

The plot? Okay, here goes... FBI Agent Lawrence is a master of disguise. We know this because we see him dress as a Korean man in the prologue. He looks like, well, Martin Lawrence dressed as a Korean man, but the bad guys fall for it, and the good guys move on to the next assignment. Howard has broken out of prison and will surely come for Long and the bank robbery money the FBI thinks she has hidden away.

So Long packs up and heads for Big Momma's house, while the FBI partners stake her out from the house across the street. Problem is, Big Momma (after taking an enormous, sound-effects-laden dump) is called away to visit a sick friend, and Giamatti panics. Lawrence has the solution, though -- he'll dress as the enorm
ous old lady and extract a confession from her unsuspecting relative. And, of course, he ends up looking like Martin Lawrence dressed as an enormous old lady.

Big Momma's House bets the bank on the idea that Lawrence dressed as an old Southern woman is funny. At times, it is, as when Pseudo Big Momma is forced in true Spies Like Us fashion to help give birth or teaches a sadistic karate instructor a thing or two about abuse. Unfortunately, the movie repeats itself endlessly -- right after the karate scene comes a sequence where P.B.M. teaches some older, basketball-playing bullies a thing or two about abuse.

You'll also see scenes where P.B.M. either, a) loses part of her disguise, b) is almost found out by her nosy neighbor (the role made possible by the Gladys Kravitz Endowment Fund), or c) is caught openly lusting after Long. So on and so on.

Almost everything in Big Momma's House has been done more times than you can count, from the testifying-in-church scene to the split-second timing that keeps the obese doppelgangers from coming face to face as the movie's end nears. And, yeah, even as predictable as the humor is, it doesn't help that all of it has been given away in the trailer.

Big Momma's House also takes the Big Daddy / Deuce Bigalow approach and tries for a legitimate romance subplot. And Lawrence acting sensitive and smooth is about as convincing as Adam Sandler / Rob Schneider before him.

In the scheme of things, this movie is worthless. But as a last-gasp multiplex choice, it's not exactly excruciating. And it even has one line of dialogue I just had to write down, delivered by the church preacher -- "She has been to sorrow's kitchen and licked the pot clean." Appropriately enough, the same could easily be said about everyone involved with this movie.

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