"Bringing Down the House," a new comedy starring Steve Martin and Queen Latifah, finds its comic subject matter and then beats it to a pulp. With few laughs and a mediocre story line, this movie hardly delivers anything to get excited about.
The focus is, of course, the perception of race through the eyes of different cultures. Peter (Martin) is a yuppie lawyer who has too much money and not enough time for his family. Thus, his wife leaves him for a much younger man who used to caddy for Peter at their country club. Peter, however, still wants his ex-wife, Kate (Jean Smart), to love him.
Meanwhile, Peter has conversations with "LawyerGirl" in an internet chatroom. They both seem to like each other and decide to set a date to meet. During this time, Peter also lands a very important case at his law firm. He will represent a filthy rich and racist heiress, Mrs. Arness (Joan Plowright).
On the day of Peter and "LawyerGirl's" meeting, Peter cleans his house and awaits her arrival. Peter, who expects a blonde lawyer to appear at his door, is shocked to see Charlene (Latifah), a black ex-convict, standing at his front door. She is aggressive, opinionated and everything that Peter is not.
Eventually, Charlene reveals that she is in desperate need of Peter's legal expertise. She claims that she was wrongfully accused of armed robbery, and she wants Peter to reopen her case. In return, she will stay out of his way by pretending to be a nanny and maid while he tries to sign Mrs. Arness and her billions.
Throughout the course of the movie, Charlene teaches Peter to lighten up and be more relaxed in front of his kids and his ex-wife. He also discovers that Charlene actually is innocent. Both individuals learn from each other, and they develop a respect for both of their lives.
Basically, this movie is filled with extreme racial stereotypes. "Bringing Down the House" portrays white people as being essentially racist, money hungry and bad dancers, while the blacks are loud, thuggish and criminals. The movie harps on these differences because, for some reason, it's the only material the writer and director seem to be able to make jokes about.
One character in particular, Kate's sister Ashley (Missi Pyle), has only one purpose in the movie: to act like the quintessential white, racist snob. She slings racial slurs at Charlene like it's her job. There is one scene where Charlene confronts Ashley and her constant verbal assaults by initiating a painful fistfight. The fight is so long, tedious, and ultimately pointless that the audience forgets what started the brawl in the first place.
Betty White's character, Mrs. Kline, serves a similar function as Peter's pesky and intruding neighbor. When Charlene causes a raucous on Peter's front lawn, Mrs. Kline comes outside in her nightgown and utters a demeaning racial slur in the most friendly and innocent fashion. I suppose the writer was going for ironic comedy with this decision, but only a feeling of awkwardness occurs.
On the other hand, the movie depicts its black members as partygoers and drug users.
The only person that appears to see past the racial differences is Howie (Eugene Levy), another lawyer in Peter's firm. He becomes attracted to Charlene's personality and her attitude toward life, and his role provides some of the funnier aspects of the movie.
That being said, the humor provided by the two leads is pretty generic. The movie belabors the race issue to no end, and all of the other jokes are pretty tired. This movie even pulls out the "ex-lax in the food gag" where Steve Martin sits uncomfortably while his insides gurgle and rumble from within. "Dumb and Dumber" and even "Van Wilder" do much better jobs with this type of humor.
The plot is so contrived and banal that everything naturally falls perfectly into place by the end. No real development actually occurs in either of the two leads. They "appear" to begin to understand each other, but the audience realizes that they are simply playing caricatures.
All in all, the movie is a pathetic attempt to explore the communication, friendship and understanding of different races. "Bringing Down the House" seems so focused on producing laughs from its outrageous stereotypes that it completely disregards its characters' actual personalities and motives.
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