Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I thought the trailer for this was obvious and slightly painful, but I will admit that Eugene Levy makes me laugh once, even though I’ve already heard the line quoted waaaaaaay too many times for comfort. I know the studio did a paid sneak around the country this weekend, but I didn’t think anyone would actually go.
Turns out I was wrong. The first review we got in for it is from one of our TalkBack League of @$$holes contributors, the ubiquitous Jon Quixote:
BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE
Starring Steve Martin & Queen Latifah
Written by Jason Filardi; Directed by Adam Shankman
Distributed by Touchtone Pictures
A Jon Quixote Review
The trailers for Bringing Down The House, a movie about a WASP lawyer who meets an African-American ex-con on the internet, and is then tricked into helping her expunge her criminal record, appeared to advertise a prime example of comedic mediocrity at its formulaic peak. The sort of movie that squeezes its “humor” out of watching an uptight white-guy try to rap and get repeatedly kicked in the ding-ding, all the while telegraphing its punchlines in a manner so obvious that the set-ups are visible from space. Almost everything about it screamed, “pass.” Except for Steve Martin.
For 15 years, Steve Martin batted 1.000 in what has to be considered one of the greatest runs in film history. From The Jerk to L.A. Story, Martin starred in 15 comedies, every one of which is watchable for something, usually absolute hilarity. He then followed this streak with three impressive dramatic turns, before striking out in 1994 with his first (and only) completely unfunny comedy. Since then, Martin has proven himself an accomplished playwright, essayist, and novelist, as well as the best, and brightest, Oscar host in history, and, while his film record has been spotty ever since the Mixed Nuts debacle, the name “Steve Martin” on the marquee still indicates that what you are about to watch should not be combined with the drinking of any milk product, lest it spray from your nose in an embarrassing manner.
If there is a lesson to be learned from Bringing Down The House, it is that faith in Martin is its own reward. This is the funniest movie I’ve seen in a long time, and, if the cacophony of laughter that filled the theatre is any indication, the rest of the audience agreed. This is a crowd-pleaser – a comedy that delivers laugh after laugh without ever resorting to profanity, flatulence, or jokes about bodily fluids.
And, while this is Martin’s movie, the credit gets to be spread around.
Credit to the script by Jason Filardi. Conventional in structure and conventional in premise, but the characters that populate it continually surprise the audience. They act like real people when most movies would have them act like movie characters, overreacting as a plot device; there’s a scene where Martin overhears Latifah talking and it sounds like she’s planning a heist, but Martin breaks new movie character ground by... sitting down and talking to her about it! Revolutionary! When the actors do act like movie characters – zany, over the top, tools of comedy - it’s in a manner that undercuts the archetype upon which they are based. Sure, the ending is about 9 different types of stupid, but it’s also so funny and so endearing that all is forgiven. It’s not a great script, but it’s smart enough and fresh enough that the cast has a lot to work with.
Credit to the supporting cast: Joan Plowright. Eugene Levy. Michael Rosenbaum. Jean Smart. Missi Pyle. And, best of all, the wonderful Betty White playing a neighborhood gossip so racist, she’d make D.W. Griffith blush – you haven’t laughed until you’ve heard St. Olaf’s favorite daughter tell an 8 year old boy he looks like a fag. These are the New York Yankees of scene-stealing, and they go at the camera like pitbulls on a kitten farm. The only problem is that there isn’t enough screen time for them all, that most of the roles are glorified cameos. What I would give to see what ended up on the cutting room floor!
Credit to Queen Latifah, the sexy (yes, sexy) and talented Queen Latifah. Wasn’t there a time where her career was poised to end up with the Anandas and the Springers in the cesspool of daytime television? Now she has an Oscar nomination to her name, and a starring role beside one of the best comedians to ever stand in front of a camera. The chemistry she has with Martin is absolutely electric. Latifah more than holds her own; she fills the screen with pomp and confidence, and challenges her co-star to elevate his game. You can literally see Martin feeding off the energy Latifah brings to the set, sometimes exploding in a burst of wild and crazy guy, the stuff he used to do in the 80’s before settling down into a mellower, more intellectual brand of comedy.
Yes, heaps and heaps of credit to Steve Martin, in the role that gets the biggest shaft from the script. He gets the kicks to the nuts, he gets to mangle Ebonics, he gets to look stupid on the dance floor. Whenever the script veers into mediocre, stock comedy territory, chances are that Martin’s on the screen. But he squeezes every possible laugh out of every lame joke and set-up.
That’s always been Martin’s gift. For all his madcap energy or for all his literary wit, Martin’s main talent is that he’s able to identify the heart of funny with surgical precision, and then pull it out for all to see. He’s on the top of his game here, and without his ability to make the lame jokes work, I’d have been too busy rolling my eyes and muttering about squandered potential to care about the genuinely hilarious moments.
Bringing Down The House isn’t going to change the world, it isn’t going to become a cult classic, with favorite lines quoted in frat houses and internet chat rooms for years to come. It’s closer to Father of the Bride or Dirty Rotten Scoundrels than it is The Man With Two Brains, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s an entertaining diversion starring some very funny people who are going all out to make you laugh. And you will laugh. Often and, usually, very loud. You could spend your pennies on far worse.
I’m... I don’t know what to think about a review like that. This was good? Really? Surely it couldn’t have been. Let’s see what Wickerman had to say:
Can we now officially declare 2003 "The Year of Eugene Levy's Cocoa Love"?
>Hey Mori,
Wickerman here, with a quick little review of "Bringing Down the House".
I had the chance to check out an advance screening tonight and I have to say, it's much funnier than I thought it would be considering its by-the-numbers trailer didn't bowl me over (no offense to you hard-working trailer-cutters out there). Yes, this is a film that, while not up there with Steve Martin's classic comedies, is rock solid entertainment that will give you plenty of laughs.
I'm sure many of you are familar with the basic story. Martin, in fine form, plays a white, uptight, divorced-with-kids lawyer who finds his life invaded by an African-American female convict (Queen Latifah) due to a dating mixup.
Basically, the movie gets by on a lot of charm from its cast, and the director Adam Shankman handles the script with an assured touch. Sure, both the main characters are eventually going to bring something to each other's different worlds, but you already know that. Martin and Latifah play off each other quite well, and Eugene Levy has a ton of choice lines as Martin's awesome aforementioned chocolate-booty-starved colleague. Can I also add that the funny Jean Smart has this total sex-kitten thing happening here, looking especially hot in the movie (I know, I know, let the "magic swirling ass" comparisons begin). Now I wouldn't have expected it, but what is surprising is how much of a statement on race issues this movie actually ends up making, as it's a factor in establishing the personalities of so many of the characters in one form or another. Of course, it's dealt with in comic fashion, but it does offer up an effective look at the underlying themes of class and belonging within its framework.
Don't bring *this* "House" down... (sorry, couldn't resist).
Another hot time in the old town tonight...
The Wickerman
Okay. See, I get the whole “the cast makes it worth seeing even if the script doesn’t” thing. I thought OLD SCHOOL was fun, even though it’s ridiculous and barely holds together as narrative. Let’s see if we can go three for three with this next one:
hey moriarty, this is bobbin i just got back from a sneak preview of steve martins new flick bringing down the house. How was it? 5 Star comedy! Funniest comedy since Old School (and Old School was the funniest comedy since well, a while..)!
The basic plot is about Steve Martin chats online and meets a woman. They plan a date, and she turns out to be Queen Latifah instead of the gorgeous white blonde woman he was expecting, and this is bad because he and everyone around him are very racist. He kicks her out, she trashes his house and throws a big party. They eventually start to become friends, and Eugene Levy falls in love with her. THEN steve martin finds out she was arrested for armed robbery but she says she was framed. Steve Martin has to go undercover and get the guy who framed her.
Hilarious movie, great acting from Queen Latifah and Eugene Levy, everyone in the audience was laughing really hard. It does have some flaws though.
The title had absolutely nothing to do with the film, and a few of the jokes were kind of cliched, and it was a bit long. If you're in the mood for a hilarious light hearted comedy definetely see it. Steve Martins best role since The Jerk.
Okay, overhype is deadly. I hear “best role since THE JERK” from anyone, and that dismisses some truly great work. ROXANNE? PLANES TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES? Any film he made with Carl Reiner? LITTLE SHOP OF HORROR? GRAND CANYON? You’re seriously telling me that BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE is better?
Lewis Black here. Don't know if you need another review of Bringing Down the House, but as a liberal guy who lives in ultra-conservative Florida, I may have a different spin on it than others.
How many times can Hollywood point out the differences between white people and black people? It’s funny... I guess... but it’s getting to the point where the same joke gets repeated. It’s as if the director is looking at the audience, pleading, “Get it?!?! He’s a WHITE guy, and she’s a BLACK girl! She speaks in slang, and he doesn’t! Isn’t that a scream?” Not really, most of the time. However, if one man can make a funny white/black comedy, it’s the one person you’d expect to not stoop as low as to make one of these movies: Steve Martin (what was his agent thinking?). The material often lets him down, but the potent combination of Martin, Latifah, and Levy pull off more laughs that I would have expected out of such a cliched, hackneyed genre of film. Don’t let my negative attitude towards this movie fool you: THIS MOVIE WILL MAKE YOU LAUGH MANY TIMES. Just not in a wildly original, mind-provoking way.
The plot is standard: Steve Martin plays a divorced lawyer who makes a blind date with someone he meets in an Internet chat room (didn’t his mother ever warn him about the dangers of the Web?). Of course, in order for chaos to ensue, his date turns out to be a large, sassy, street-wise, slang-spewing black woman (Queen Latifah). At first, they butt heads, but eventually (what else?) she teaches him how to be a better father and how to win his ex-wife back. In the end, he helps her with her legal problems as well. Sigh. Happy ending.
So the plot sucks. That’s not the point. The point is that Martin and Latifah share some great chemistry in this movie. Even if their dialogue is cliched (which it becomes on occasion), they’re selling it as best as they can. More chemistry that I never would’ve expected: the chemistry between Latifah and Eugene Levy as an uptight lawyer who has an insatiable penchant for large black women. These three keep this movie out of the gutter.
Also, there are one-liners that are pretty clever; although wit is a Steve Martin standard, it’s not what I would have expected in a black/white movie. But the script sometimes brings up topics of discussion and leaves them unresolved or creates terrible stereotypes for white people as well as black people. For example, pretty much every upper-class white person except Martin, his kids, and Levy are absurdly racist. Topics of racism are brought up, but not discussed; Latifah just says “Oh hell no,” and then punches them. Yet she goes along with black slave stereotypes to appease these upper-class white racists. See kids? Racism and intolerance are funny! My theatre died laughing at the line “I thought I heard a Negro.” Get it? A white lady said the word “Negro!” What a scream. And these “Yessa massa” jokes happen quite a bit. And they’re never particularly funny either.
However, when they mock the white culture misunderstanding of black slang, Martin has the sincerity and the timing to pull it off; I believe that Martin really does have NO idea what “kicked it off the heezy” means, thus, it strikes me as funny. And hearing Levy say “Holla at ya boy” had me rolling in the aisles. I think Levy is at a point in his career where even in crap movies he can generate laughs out of nowhere. Currently, the man can do no wrong, and I’d like to thank those responsible for American Pie for making him a popular comedian once again. And Jean Smart as Martin’s wife is surprisingly funny as his casually racist but more tolerant than most wife; she gets upset not because her husband is seeing a big black woman, but because she isn’t cool enough to steal his heart away like the big black woman is. Breaking down in tears while saying the line “What they say is true then; once you’ve had black, you never go back” is an accomplishment for any actress, and she delivers that and her other funny lines with dead-on timing.
Another discussion brought up and never resolved is why intelligent black people choose to slur their words together and speak in slang as if they don’t know English. Latifah dismisses it as “That’s who I am, don’t worry bout me,” but when she’s in trouble, she speaks in a sophisticated manner! Doesn’t she see that she uses proper English and not slang to get herself out of scrapes? Why doesn’t she just use it all the time? I guess the screenwriter decided that by addressing “issues” that he was allowed to make jokes about racists throughout the film. Instead it just confused me as to what direction the movie was going to take. Also, the direction by Adam Shankman (experienced in making shit movies such as “The Wedding Planner”) is absolutely misguided the majority of the time. He allows unfunny segments to go on forever (especially a fight between Latifah and a white girl…my audience was laughing the first 20 minutes of the fight, but then it died down), and other inspired moments to be cut short. Martin might have been better off directing this film himself. Or getting Hype Williams to do it. I kid.
Overall, good performances all around make this movie (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) worth your time. It’s definitely the best movie in the “look-at-how-different-old-white-people-and-young-black-people-are” genre that I’ve seen. But of course that’s not saying this will make any of my Top 10 lists. It’s a good fun date movie, worth the matinee price. No more, no less. And, to paraphrase Eugene Levy, I ain’t straight trippin’, boo.
Grade: B-.
Quotable Quote: “Why you’d come back from your vacation early?” “Bears were mauling the campers…and eating them.”-Jean Smart delivering a punchline I’m convinced that Norm MacDonald wrote.
Lewis out.
Thanks, everybody. I appreciate it, and I guess I’m not dreading this one now. I’m going to end up seeing it anyway, since it’s my gf’s turn to pick the movie next weekend, and she’s had this one picked since she saw the trailer three months ago. At least now, I’m looking forward to it, and I certainly hope it’s more BOWFINGER than SGT. BILKO.
"Moriarty" out.
