Big Momma's House (2000) Rating: 0.5 stars out of 5.0 stars
Cast: Martin Lawrence, Nia Long, Paul Giamatti, Jascha Washington, Terrence Dashon Howard, Anthony Anderson, Ella Mitchell Written by: Darryl Quarles and Don Rhymer Directed by: Raja Gosnell Running Time: 98 minutes Screening Theater: Starnet Pablo 9 Theaters - Jacksonville Beach, FL
What happens when you put Martin Lawrence in a fat suit in real life? You get Martin Lawrence in a coma (the comedian thought he was getting fat, so he put on numerous layers of heavy clothing and went jogging in 100 degree heat, ending up in a coma). So what happens when you put Martin Lawrence in a fat suit in the movies? You get an audience in a coma.
In Big Momma's House, Lawrence plays a FBI agent who's a master of disguises. When a naughty, naughty man escapes from jail and seeks out his former girlfriend (the very sexy Nia Long... the only thing worth looking at in this movie), she flees to Georgia to stay with her rather large Southern aunt "Big Momma" (Ella Mitchell). The FBI follows her in order to recover the large sum of money stolen in the bank robbery that sent the naughty man to jail. However, Big Momma is called away on an emergency. Sensing that they could lose their only chance to capture the criminal, Lawrence goes undercover as Big Momma. And let the comedy begin!
Big Momma's House is the definition of a "gimmick" movie if there ever was one. The plot can basically be summed up as "Martin Lawrence dresses up as a fat woman"... and even that description is too wordy. You can just see this script plotted out on a chalkboard with MARTIN LAWRENCE/FAT WOMAN in the middle of the board with a big circle around it, and all sorts of clichéd, "humorous" situations pointing to it. Fat woman plays basketball! Fat woman takes a dump! Fat woman kung fu! Well they left one off the board... movie critic slips into coma!
Paul Giamatti (Private Parts, The Negotiator) plays Lawrence's partner and as much as I enjoy his work, even he can't inject life into this lifeless comedy. Hell, the greatest performers on the planet couldn't make this material work... it's just that awful.
Reviewed by Chuck Dowling - chuckd21@fdn.com AOL Instant Messenger: FilmJax The Jacksonville Film Journal - http://www.jaxfilmjournal.com/
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews