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What it's about:
Big Momma is back! This time with his/her/its rapper-wannabe son in tow as the two go undercover (enrolling in, would ya know it, an all-girl's school in drag) to retrieve some pretty damning evidence to bring down a master criminal.
What we thought:
Where to even begin with this unholy piece of –
OK! Alright! Deep breaths, everyone. Let's try and keep thing in perspective. It's not a holocaust, it's not an apartheid, it's not nuclear war, it's not Keeping Up With The Kardashians. It's just a movie. That's all – just a harmless piece of entertainment. It's a little bit of multiplex fodder, something to keep the cash rolling in and the masses stupefied for a couple of hours. It's nothing to get worked up about, right?
Right?
Well, maybe, maybe not. All I want to know is just how much more of this undiluted crap are we as paying audiences supposed to put up wit? Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son is unredeemably awful with absolutely nothing to recommend about it but what's really shocking is that this howling load of codswallop is the THIRD in a series! How on earth did this happen? Are we, as a culture, so starved for entertainment that we have financed THREE different films whose main source of "comedy" – and I use that term very loosely – is the utterly unfunny Martin Lawrence dressing up as an utterly unconvincingly woman? Is this really what we've come to?
Now, the whole cross-dressing breed of comedy is hardly a recent occurrence, nor is it an intrinsically bad one. It all started, after all, with one of the great comedy classics: Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot. While few (if any) of the films that followed it have come close to reaching the levels reached and set by Wilder and co, it's hard to imagine a film doing a greater disservice to the comic conventions established by that film then Big Mommas 3.
And yet, the "creators" of this monstrosity have taken the insult one step further by constantly referencing Some Like It Hot – not least by essentially stealing Wilder's plot wholesale. As if it wasn't bad enough that greats like Billy Wilder, Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon are no longer with us, Lawrence and friends effectively dancing on their graves is almost too much to bear.
If this sounds unfair and overly harsh, it's only because this film deserves every last bit of bile coming its way. Granted, it's nowhere near as hateful as it could have been – and it's certainly nowhere near as ill-advised as 50 Cent's Gun – but its obvious contempt for the intelligence of its audience is offensive.
There's no two ways about it: the writers, director, producers and main star responsible for this abomination obviously see their audience as a bunch of meat-headed Neanderthals with all the cumulative sense of humour of a stalk of celery. Everything about this film is insulting: its so-called characters, the ham-fisted sentimentality, the insane plot contrivances. Martin Lawrence in drag stopped being funny two Big Mommas ago. Even the bleak Oscar-nominated Winter's Bone, which featured scenes of squirrel-skinning and abject poverty, had more laughs.
Here's hoping Lawrence either retires after this, or never wears a fatsuit again. The world would be better off.
Big Momma is back! This time with his/her/its rapper-wannabe son in tow as the two go undercover (enrolling in, would ya know it, an all-girl's school in drag) to retrieve some pretty damning evidence to bring down a master criminal.
What we thought:
Where to even begin with this unholy piece of –
OK! Alright! Deep breaths, everyone. Let's try and keep thing in perspective. It's not a holocaust, it's not an apartheid, it's not nuclear war, it's not Keeping Up With The Kardashians. It's just a movie. That's all – just a harmless piece of entertainment. It's a little bit of multiplex fodder, something to keep the cash rolling in and the masses stupefied for a couple of hours. It's nothing to get worked up about, right?
Right?
Well, maybe, maybe not. All I want to know is just how much more of this undiluted crap are we as paying audiences supposed to put up wit? Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son is unredeemably awful with absolutely nothing to recommend about it but what's really shocking is that this howling load of codswallop is the THIRD in a series! How on earth did this happen? Are we, as a culture, so starved for entertainment that we have financed THREE different films whose main source of "comedy" – and I use that term very loosely – is the utterly unfunny Martin Lawrence dressing up as an utterly unconvincingly woman? Is this really what we've come to?
Now, the whole cross-dressing breed of comedy is hardly a recent occurrence, nor is it an intrinsically bad one. It all started, after all, with one of the great comedy classics: Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot. While few (if any) of the films that followed it have come close to reaching the levels reached and set by Wilder and co, it's hard to imagine a film doing a greater disservice to the comic conventions established by that film then Big Mommas 3.
And yet, the "creators" of this monstrosity have taken the insult one step further by constantly referencing Some Like It Hot – not least by essentially stealing Wilder's plot wholesale. As if it wasn't bad enough that greats like Billy Wilder, Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon are no longer with us, Lawrence and friends effectively dancing on their graves is almost too much to bear.
If this sounds unfair and overly harsh, it's only because this film deserves every last bit of bile coming its way. Granted, it's nowhere near as hateful as it could have been – and it's certainly nowhere near as ill-advised as 50 Cent's Gun – but its obvious contempt for the intelligence of its audience is offensive.
There's no two ways about it: the writers, director, producers and main star responsible for this abomination obviously see their audience as a bunch of meat-headed Neanderthals with all the cumulative sense of humour of a stalk of celery. Everything about this film is insulting: its so-called characters, the ham-fisted sentimentality, the insane plot contrivances. Martin Lawrence in drag stopped being funny two Big Mommas ago. Even the bleak Oscar-nominated Winter's Bone, which featured scenes of squirrel-skinning and abject poverty, had more laughs.
Here's hoping Lawrence either retires after this, or never wears a fatsuit again. The world would be better off.
