Big Momma's House

Big Momma's House stars Martin Lawrence as an FBI agent who finds himself in the not particularly amusing situation of having to pose as a fat old lady. Lawrence plays Malcolm Turner, a master of disguise, who, as the film opens, is cunningly disguised as an old oriental gentleman. The job is a success, and he goes back to the office to relax, but is immediately given a new assignment. A vicious bank robber has escaped from jail, and the FBI want to find him, not only so they can put him back in jail, but so they can find the two million dollars that he has supposedly hidden. They suspect that his ex-girlfriend, Sherry, played by Nia Long, knows where the money is. Malcolm's job is to find Sherry and the money before the bad guy does. When Sherry hears about his escape, she is terrified and flees with her son to hide out with her grandma, Big Momma. When Big Momma unexpectedly leaves town for a few days, Malcolm and his colleague, fearing that Sherry will disappear off somewhere else, decide to take over the house and pretend that Big Momma is home. They do this by disguising Malcolm as Big Momma.

This is where the film drops into complete predictability. We are taken through a series of typical scenes, which are supposed to be funny but mostly are not. For example, Malcolm doesn't know how to cook whereas Big Momma is a great cook. So he has to pretend he can, and he is a complete idiot about it because that's supposed to be funny. It isn't. In another scene, Malcolm tries to get a look at Sherry in her underwear, and falls off of a chair. And there are the usual scenes in which people come into his room when he's not quite ready, and he has to hide his moustache and so on. Of course, in the end, the real Big Momma comes home, and we have the obligatory scene where one Big Momma enters the room just as the other is leaving and no one notices how different they look, except to say "Wow, you changed your clothes so quickly". Finally, this film has the most stupid childbirth scene ever. It's all just so embarrassing to watch. Perhaps I'm too British or something, but this kind of 'humour' just doesn't work.

To be honest, I was often bored while watching Big Momma's House. The only interesting bits were where Malcolm tried to date Sherry as himself. There were a few nice moments in those scenes, but generally the film was silly, irritating and had too many tired old plot mechanisms.