Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son
It's disappointing, because Jackson -- who's made a living playing the comic-relief in Tropic Thunder, Percy Jackson, The Lottery Ticket, and more -- is a pretty talented young actor, but he needs to show he can do something clever, not this lowbrow comedy. He should be trying to stretch himself, like Jamie Foxx, Will Smith, or even Marlon Wayans (in Requiem for a Dream) did earlier in their careers. Cross-dressing is a tried and true movie staple in comedies, and when it works, it can be amazing (Some Like It Hot, The Birdcage, Mrs. Doubtfire). Unfortunately, this particular series is just a drag.
Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son
And like that, with a single cut to the pair on an escalator in slow-motion, Lawrence and Jackson are in their drag costumes with no further explanation. (Is that the first step of FBI protocol?) Lawrence, though it is never mentioned, presumably had his costume from the previous films sitting in a closet somewhere. Jackson, however, must have been fitted for a full-face prosthetic mask and padded suit in a scene elided from the film.
THE ASSIGNED NUMBERSUnlike the MPAA we do not assign one inscrutable rating based on age but 3 objective ratings for SEX/NUDITY, VIOLENCE/GORE & LANGUAGE on a scale of 0 to 10, from lowest to highest depending on quantity & context more
Longtime Movieweb contributor that was uploading 1-minute movie reviews to the world wide web via AOL before Youtube or social media existed. I make tons of straight-to-video movies you can find at Amazon & Vimeo. DVDs are back and I like it!
Matt Paprocki has critiqued home media and video games for 20 years across outlets like Washington Post, Variety, Rolling Stone, Forbes, IGN, Playboy, Polygon, Ars, and others. His current passion project is the technically minded DoBlu.com. You can read Matt's body of work via his personal WordPress blog, and follow him on Twitter @Matt_Paprocki.
Welcome to Comedy 101. Our first lesson will be: Fat Suits and Why They're Always Funny. See, people love fat suits. They love to say, "Hey that's that one actor, but he's dressed up like a morbidly obese person. That's funny!" This is the impenetrable logic that has perpetuated not one, not two, but three 'Big Momma' movies. No matter how much I hate the idea of fat suits equaling comedy, I can't fight the fact that we now have three movies where Martin Lawrence dresses up like a fat old lady and yells "Daaamn!" for an hour and a half. I guess this is what the public wants.
FBI Agent Malcolm Turner (Lawrence) is working a tough case. His informant wants witness protection, but Malcolm is unable to give it to him unless he wears a wire to the next meeting. Malcolm is being attacked on another front. His son, Trent (Brandon T. Jackson) wants to be a rapper, but he's underage. He's been invited to go on tour, but can't without his father's permission, being a minor and all. Malcolm has other plans for his son, like going to Duke for a higher education. After all, he went to Duke and look how life turned out for him. Here's a guy who uses his FBI issued vehicle to chase down his mailman in order to get his son's college acceptance letter. Yeah, Malcolm turned out to be a great human being.
Thinking like a rational human being Trent decides to follow his dad and ambush him at his job. That way his dad can't say no. Both of them soon wind up in a fire fight with nefarious gangsters and now have to go undercover. They hide away in an all girls arts school where an object of great importance to Malcolm's case is supposed to be hidden.
Why anyone would want to subject themselves to a movie experience like this is beyond my comprehension. Why anyone would want to actually own this movie to presumably watch repeatedly is a mystery. There isn't one laugh-worthy scene in this entire chore of a movie.
The artificially boosted contrast doesn't seem to harm the blacks in the picture though. They're inky and respectively deep. Shadow delineation is nicely done. Fine detail is almost too good. When we can see the lines of the fat prosthetics sticking out like a sore thumb, you have to wonder why every one of the characters fail to see the crappy make up job. It's easy to spot the lines under the chin and around the mouths of the actors where the prosthetic doesn't exactly match the real actor's skin tone. 041b061a72
