Review by Sam Price
Stars Martin Lawrence, Brandon T Jackson, Jessica Lucas, Michelle Ang, Portia Doubleday, Emily Rios, Ana Ortiz, Henri Lubatti, Lorenzo Pisoni, Tony Curran, Brandon Gill
Written by Matthew Fogel
Certification UK PG | US PG-13
Runtime 107 minutes
Directed by John Whitesell
At the climax of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes, ballet dancer Moira Shearer hurls herself off a railway bridge in an effort to escape the intoxicating allure of an art form that has driven her to dementia and the edge of reason. Her would-be lover cradles her fragile body in his arms, her soul rapidly leaving her body as she whispers to him: “Take off the red shoes.”
Towards the end of Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, this last-wheeze excuse for a “franchise” that has Martin Lawrence sticking his head up a cinematic U-bend like a turd that won’t flush, a similar scene occurs. Caught in a web of his own cross-dressing lies, and confronted by a gang of vaguely Russian mobsters, the only FBI agent who enjoys wearing women’s clothing more than J Edgar Hoover, Malcolm Turner (Lawrence), is instructed to “take off the fat suit” or face getting shot. Given that Lawrence has shown such an easy readiness for slipping into rubber prostheses at the drop of a hat over the past decade, you’d be forgiven for thinking he’d sooner go down the Red Shoes route and sacrifice himself in a hail of bullets than part from his affectionate alter-ego “Big Momma”. Instead, the only thing approaching Lawrence voluntarily immolating himself for the sake of paying audience is a moment where his now-buxom stepson and heir apparent to the family business, faceplants into him wearing a tutu. “Now I know why they call it the Nutcracker,” gasps Lawrence, stuck in a role of symbolic castration that perfectly summarises his waning star power. If only he’d demonstrate Shearer’s commitment to her art, and we’d have had done with this nonsense 10 years ago.
As it is, the flimsy pretext for breaking out the floral dresswear this time around is one that cribs straight from Some Like It Hot, though the comparisons between this and Billy Wilder’s masterwork end there. As witness to a murder during a sting operation gone wrong, Lawrence’s next of kin, Trent (Jackson), must keep himself hidden from view or face getting iced by some indeterminate goons. For reasons unbeknown to anyone – least of all the scriptwriters – this takes the form of the two of them looking for an incriminating flash drive hidden away in a music box at an all-girls musical academy. The predictable ease with which the plot wraps up, foregoing a nauseating a sub-Godfather III cannoli-fondling scene where two people fall in love while "syncopating" their musical styles, marks Big Mommas out as an easy, if entirely dumb and undemanding, watch.
Case in point is Jackson’s Trent. Trent is a character who supposedly starts off the film as a frustrated hip-hop artist who refers to himself in the third person as “Prodi-G” and is desperate to get his stepfather to sign a record contract. And despite not putting up a fight before becoming a transvestite, instead of doing the logical thing like skipping town or fleeing the country, Trent is straight. We know Trent is straight because he screams “DAYUM!” every time he catches a cursory glance at a woman’s brassiere, or otherwise fights to contain a spontaneous erection whenever loosely confronted with a female chest. More diverting are Lawrence’s hijinks with a security guard who harbours an uncontrollable fat fetish, and corners him with a Twister board, while seductively groping him and coming out with lines like: “Even a Momma Bear needs some sugar.” Lawrence’s almost total lack of compunction with regard to getting his backside fondled by a man who professes an admiration for a woman with “funk in her trunk”, is perhaps the only noteworthy occurrence is an otherwise forgettable affair.
Lawrence, as ever, gives a game performance but all the script asks of him is to fall over occasionally, make a grunting sound at his adversaries whilst shaking his fist, and repeat the phrase “… but everyone just calls me Big Momma” to the point where you wonder if the filmmakers are trying to get it into Barlett’s. But in a world where Tracy Morgan’s fictional movie Honky Grandma Be Trippin’ is the stuff of a 10-second punchline in 30 Rock, and Lawrence’s own box-office pull has long been eclipsed by the likes of the Wayans brothers and Tyler Perry, the very existence of this film is likely only to appeal to the morbidly curious and the sadomasochistic.
That said, the film is largely inoffensive if you forgive it its central conceit. But for those who don’t, at one entirely non-ironic point in the film, Big Momma chides a skinny nude model for taking part in such a practice that “reinforces an ugly stereotype” of a social group that has been subject to historical subjugation. It’s probably safe to say that at that point during filming, somewhere in the world, Hattie McDaniel’s grave exploded.