Featured Movies
Partners
Big Momma's House 2
Martin Lawrence returns as the FBI agent with a thing about dressing up as a fat old lady
Big Momma's House came out in 2000 and was, we are told, a huge box office smash, making Martin Lawrence a household name throughout the Western world. Martin Lawrence. Lawrence? Martin Lawrence? He's a personable American bloke with a nice enough face. You must have heard of him. Anyway, six years later and some of the team behind the original film have come up with a devilish new premise with which to re-launch the hilarious Big Momma (Lawrence in an appalling fat suit and ludicrously naff grey wig) back onto a waiting public. If Big Momma were a stagediver and movie-goers were the crowd, the tide would have gone out faster than you can say, "derivative poppycock." In fact, to say this is derivative is beyond redundant. An off-the-wall FBI agent with a history of solving cases dressed as an unfunny lady is put out to pasture in the bureau's PR department so his pregnant wife needn't worry about him getting shot at by baddies anymore. But when he hears a colleague has been plugged by some of the aforementioned baddies, he is duty-bound to go AWOL to bring the wrong-doers to justice. And how will he do this? By dusting off his unconvincing fat suit and latex head, putting on a flowery frock and heading to the chief suspect's house to pose as a children's nanny. Which of course he succeeds in doing immediately by being a gauche, overly jolly black woman that adults and kids alike just can't help falling in love with. Within nanoseconds he is teaching the baddy and his wife how to be better parents, taking cheerleading practice with their youngest daughter and rustling up a mean breakfast with his spare hand. The stupidity with which director John Whitesell and writer Don Rhymer credit their audience is jaw-dropping. Suspension of disbelief is one thing. But asking even a three-year-old to believe that an idiot in a rubbish costume can foil a plot to infiltrate the US government's intelligence system is a total boggler. The check list is ticked from top to bottom in the cross-dressing caper genre. Man dressed as woman sees boobies and doesn't know where to put himself. Man dressed as particularly fat woman completes a series of athletic back-flips and martial arts manoeuvres that really are quite surprising in a 'woman' of his size. Man dressed as fat woman falls off a stool that's too small to contain his comically large buttocks. The one and only time you may laugh is at the epilogue, where Lawrence, with all the chutzpah of a man who hasn't just committed career suicide, looks at the camera, winks and smiles. And the voice over informs us that you never know when Big Momma may be back for another adventure. But then the laughter will be of the hysterical, uneasy kind that might require one of your fellow cinema-goers to hit you hard around the face to snap you out of it. Verdict Everyone involved in making this should be put to death. No one should be spared. And they should sell tickets. |
