BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE
Reviewed by: Max - SimplyScripts Reviewer
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Director: Adam Shankman
Writer: Jason Filardi
Starring: Queen Latifah as Charlene
Steve Martin as Peter
Eugene Levy as Howie
Grade: C
This film's about a hard-working divorced man (Martin) that finds love on the Internet. He decides to meet her and when she shows up at his house he finds out that she's actually an ex-convict that just escaped from prison. She declares that he clear her name so she can live a regular life without being wanted by the police.
It has a great cast and a pretty good plot. But it just doesn't seem to work. It had loads of potential (more than I thought it would) but the script doesn't seem to pull it off. Everyone in the film is racist and the silly dialogue seems to slow it down a bit. I was at the drive-in for a double feature: "Dreamcatcher" and this. I was planning on that this movie would suck and "Dreamcatcher" would rock. But this film did surprise me a little. It is extremely funny at times. Like the scene where the little boy is reading an article out of a porno magazine and the scene where the little boy is called a fag by her elderly next door neighbor (Betty White). But everything beside those two scenes are not all that great. Within the last couple of months we've had continuous films that make fun of white people. Like "Head of State" and "Malibu's Most Wanted" to be a couple of examples. Personally, I'm getting sort of tired of them. Yeah, they were funny way back in 1996, but not anymore.
The film did have its pretty funny and hysterical moments but doesn't seem to reach what it could have. A unoriginal and dull mess. How could Steve Martin have been so darn stupid? He does give a pretty funny performance as trying to impersonate a black guy but everything besides that is a little boring. Queen Latifah didn't do all that bad, actually I found her really funny and I realized she is a pretty good actor. Eugene Levy does what he usually does and does it perfectly. A great idea, but could have been better.
copyright (c) 2003, Max Colston, Used with Permission
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