Martin Lawrence is not an actor who’s strived for greatness. Content to coast from generic comedy to generic comedy, Lawrence has made a career out of mediocrity in all shapes and sizes. From stylistic yet emotionally devoid action films to family friendly romps that actually have the power to drive a wedge in any family who view the films, Lawrence sticks to his wheelhouse when picking projects.
His latest film, Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, does not mark a sea change for the actor — if anything, it’s a pronounced declaration that the limp, ineffectual comedy that Lawrence champions isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it’s spread to the next generation.
In Big Mommas, Lawrence reprises a character that has sadly become his signature role — Malcolm Turner, an FBI agent who, when he needs to go undercover, dons the alternate identity of Big Momma, a morbidly obese elderly woman who dishes out sage wisdom with one breath and juvenile potty humor in the next.
Four years have passed since the world saw a fat suit-wearing Martin Lawrence slam dunk a basketball in Big Mamma’s House 2, and the character of Malcolm Turner has settled into the domestic life of an overly protective step-father to a rebellious would-be rap superstar played by Brandon T. Jackson.
Without much respect for audiences’ intelligence, screenwriter Matthew Fogel quickly concocts a scenario that sees Turner in need of Big Momma’s help when he must go undercover in an all girl’s school for the arts to search for a missing flash drive that will help convict an insultingly generic Russian terrorist played by Tony Curran.
Because Turner’s son witnessed the execution of a man in witness protection, he must join his father undercover as Charmaine, Big Momma’s plump and sassy great-niece. Before you can ask “where’s the beef?,” the story skips any unnecessary fluff like exposition or plot setup to dump the two cross-dressing comedians onto the set of Fame. Thrown in with a school full of musicians, ballerinas and future divas, the two must navigate a sea of estrogen while trying to sort out their own relationship.
Big Mommas is not a thinking man’s comedy. It’s not even a comedy as much as it is a long, painful argument for the degradation of the cross-dressing comedian sub-genre. Throwing men in dresses for a laugh has been a comedy staple for a long, long time — its existence was one of the ways God originally cursed humanity for eating the forbidden fruit. Big Mommas seems intent on being the ultimate argument for why the comedy tradition in question needs to be scrubbed from civilization’s memory like polio or Menudo.
Director John Whitesell follows the same stone paths that had previously been set by the film’s comedic forefathers — events such as Ladybugs, Sorority Girls and the black plague. As “funny” as all previously mentioned human atrocities were, Big Mommas is a film that takes humor to a new low. Lazy beyond recognition, the film thinks all it needs to do to illicit laughs is take Ken Jeong off his medication and throw him into the movie for a brief, unintelligible cameo as a wacked out mailman.
Much like Joeng does not know when to turn down a roll, Big Mommas does not know when to show restraint — consistently going for what appears to be an easy laugh but, upon closer inspection, is really a rotting opossum carcass on the side of the bumpy road that is the film’s decent into pure, unbridled awfulness.
Most film fans already know Lawrence is incapable of stringing together a genuine laugh (though we always pray to be proven wrong) but the real disappointment is Brandon T. Jackson. Jackson is the star of the movie — casting Lawrence as a giant, floral dress wearing piece of furniture designed to accentuate the budding relationship between the young rapper and the pianist who is too stupid to realize the horny new co-ed she has been hanging out with is wearing a heavy layer of rubber over her face. In the film, Jackson not only fails as a comedian but, with limp, lazy lyrics given to him via the script, fails as a rapper.
Jackson represents the filmmakers’ attempts to revamp the Big Momma franchise as a teen-oriented comedy. The film must show the producers’ deeply rooted underestimation for teenagers’ mental capacity because almost all of the jokes are written as if they were being prepped for a stand-up comedy routine for turnips.
Big Mommas is the type of film that exists to add clip footage to the eventual segment showing all the embarrassing early films of Brandon T. Jackson’s career.
Not even the unbridled enthusiasm of the always reliable Faizon Love is enough to save the movie from being an embarrassing reminder that Hollywood spends more money on terrible movies than it would cost to send a class full of children to college — education sorely needed for a generation that has grown up thinking the Big Momma franchise is comedic gold.
Director: John Whitesell
Notable Cast: Martin Lawrence, Brandon T. Jackson, Jessica Lucas, Tony Curran and Faizon Love
Writer(s): Matthew Fogel
