Hey folks, Harry here. Now... do you want a completely valid reason to see BIG MAMMA'S HOUSE? No? Well, I'm giving one to you anyway. Believe it or not, the director of BIG MAMMA'S HOUSE is the very same director that will be behind the camera to shoot.... FANTASTIC FOUR. Yup. From BIG MAMMA'S HOUSE to FANTASTIC FOUR. And... Capone likes this film, which probably means... that despite the odds... BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE might actually be good. Now think about this real hard.... If this director can make a film like BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE... a quickee flick to exploit the funny man in a fat suit concept.... and make it good... What can he do with a script by screenwriting Gods SAM HAMM and MICHAEL FRANCE... about my fave heroes? Well... I'm scared. We'll see...
Hey Harry, Capone in Chicago here with a day-before review of Martin Lawrence's surprisingly amusing latest film, BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE.
In Martin Lawrence’s last film, BLUE STREAK, he played a cat burglar who pretended to be a police officer. So the natural evolution of Lawrence as an actor would lead him to his latest work, BIG MOMMA’S HOUSE, where he plays an FBI agent pretending to be an old fat grandmother. Are you following me?I’ll go toe to toe with anyone in saying the Martin Lawrence is responsible for some of the funniest material I’ve ever seen. His concert film YOU SO CRAZY is one of the best stand-up performances I’ve ever seen on celluloid, and his movie with Eddie Murphy, LIFE, is a surprisingly good comedy-drama, which also required Lawrence to wear make up through much of the film. BIG MOMMA’S HOUSE isn’t as funny as those to films, but it does have its moments...many of them. On the surface, the movie may appear to have transplanted one of the family members from THE NUTTY PROFESSOR and dropped her into (or is it onto?) the body of Martin Lawrence, but that doesn’t quite capture it. Lawrence’s FBI agent is a master of disguise (as we are shown in an utterly pointless opening sequence, where Lawrence pretends to be an old Asian man). He and his partner (Paul Giamatti) are tailing the girlfriend (Nia Long) of a ruthless bank robber, hoping that the criminal will eventually come to her. She decides to take up residence in the home of her grandmother, whom she hasn’t seen since she was a little girl. Through a ridiculous set of circumstances that I won’t even go into here, Lawrence assumes the identity of the grandmother so he can keep closer tabs on the granddaughter.Okay, fine, 75% of the film is just Lawrence in a fat suit doing things like playing basketball, using kung fu, dancing, and just generally being more active than most old and heavy people usually are; but most of the time it’s funny! And there are, of course, the anticipated lapses in believability in the storyline. For example, if Lawrence is pretending to be a woman, why wouldn’t he just shave his mustache instead of putting latex over it and making it look like he got punched in the mouth? And although the makeup and body suit are good, wouldn’t some of Big Momma’s close friends and neighbors see it wasn’t the same woman we see early in the film? I guess not. The film also suffers from being in such close proximity to MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2, which officially soured me to the use of latex masks as a plot device. (At least in BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE, they use real masks and makeup and not bogus CGI effects.)As is often the case with many recent broad comedies, it’s not the main storyline that’s the most interesting feature. There’s a romance here between Long and Lawrence (by accident, the two end up meeting when Lawrence is out of makeup) that actually would have made for a cute film of its own. Long is the real heart of the film, and we end up caring more about how she and her young son fare in this silly story than we do about Lawrence. Director Raja Gosnell has shown a flare in the past for well-structured but bizarre love stories, as he did in Drew Barrymore’s NEVER BEEN KISSED. Although BIG MOMMA’S HOUSE isn’t going to win any prizes for its makers, it's a mostly funny, harmless piece of PG-13-rated fluff. I'm sure other films this summer will be funnier and better written (actually SHANGHAI NOON is funnier), but it's a step in the right direction for Lawrence.
Capone
