BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2000 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
What could be funnier that the mere sight of a really obese woman? How about a guy in a few hundred pounds of latex impersonating one?
Well, if this is your brand of humor -- as it was for exactly one very vocal member of our audience -- then BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE, starring Martin Lawrence (BLUE STREAK), may be just the film for you. This one-joke movie generated a paltry number of laughs from our audience, save the aforementioned one-person laugh track. My personal laugh count total was exactly zero. The movie's attempts at humor weren't even enough to get many small grins out of me. Only in the few episodes when Lawrence escapes his "funny" costume does the story ever possess any genuine charm.
The minimal plot concerns an FBI agent, Malcolm Turner (Martin Lawrence), who goes undercover to impersonate a 400-pound woman known to one and all as Big Momma. He hopes that Sherry, the girlfriend of escaped bank robber and murderer Lester Vesco (Terrence Howard), who barely appears in the movie, will spill the beans to her Big Momma as to Lester's whereabouts.
Sherry, played by the lovely Nia Long (BOILER ROOM), adds class to a movie that doesn't have much. An actress who brings intelligence and grace to her pictures, she has such well-scrubbed looks that she always seems as if she just finished shooting a commercial for beauty soap.
Director Raja Gosnell, working from a hopeless script by Darryl Quarles and Don Rhymer, gives Lawrence little apparent guidance, letting him wander around aimlessly in his outlandish outfit, searching for laughs. Typical of the film's humor is a basketball match in which Big Momma plays a mean game, surprising some teenagers with her agility. At it's worst, suffice it to say that you'll thank your lucky stars that Smell-o-Vision didn't catch-on.
Is there anything good in the movie other than Nia Long? The music is not bad.
BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE runs 1:35. It is rated PG-13 for crude humor, sexual innuendo, language, brief nudity and some violence and would be acceptable for kids around 10 and up.
My son Jeffrey, age 11, who loved Lawrence's last picture (BLUE STREAK), laughed very little at this one. Giving it just **, he liked Lawrence only during those rare moments when he wasn't wearing a ton of latex. His main criticism of the film was simply that it wasn't very funny.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com
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