I love how studios assume that just because you stuff a moderately funny man like Ken Jeong in a hip moderately entertaining show like “Community,” you’re destined for comedic greatness. They thought they could work Jeong in for easy laughs in “Vampires Suck!” and they failed. And lo and behold he shows up in the first five minutes of “Big Momma’s” playing–what else–a crazy Asian man who happens to be a disgruntled postal worker. No one in “Big Momma’s” acts like an actual person you’d see on the street. No one would actually chase down and violently tussle with a mailman but hey, Martin Lawrence is grasping at straws in the final film series he really seems to be holding on to for dear life.
Relying on the same formula not even the Wayans Bros. or Eddie Murphy could perfect, Lawrence returns yet again as Malcolm, a cop who has a propensity for going undercover as obese African American women. Here he has someone to latch on to him and likely carry on the franchise when it’s rebooted in DVD land. Brandon T. Jackson hangs on to the coat tails of the wrong person for this outing of comedy as Malcolm’s distant son and aspiring rapper Trent is taken along for the cross dressing antics. Hoping to curb much of the faded comic chops Lawrence had at one time in his life, Jackson is added as a form of appealing to the dwindling youth crowd from Lawrence and does very little to add a new flavor to this shockingly enduring movie series. When a crime bust goes awry, Trent interrupts the attempted sting and witnesses the murder of a key witness who was connected to Malcolm.
As you can guess the two go on the run and naturally Malcolm’s first line of logic isn’t to go to the police, or even tell his wife what happened (she’s generally left for lip service and never actually shown on-screen). He signs up to a school for performing arts. For girls. There of course is where we’re subjected to endless arrays of sex jokes, jabs at women’s underwear, and it’s where Malcolm and Trent can connect as they form a bond with the women at the school (the alpha bitch and villainous is of course caucasian). Trent obviously gets to prove himself as a rapper there (there’s even an excuse to get Jackson to rap on-screen). “Big Momma’s” is a cash grab from top to bottom and Martin Lawrence doesn’t even seem to mind at this point because Martin Lawrence gets to remain relevant for five more minutes. And that’s all that matters.
This is a film so void of logic and sound reasoning it’s a waste of time to even endure, and I had a hard time staying focused through about ninety percent of it. Although I did have a fun time wondering why character Malcolm’s first answer to any dilemma is to dress up like a woman. Does he have a back stock of these fat suits? Or are these preserved skins of old women he’s slaughtered after long bouts of fighting crime? But then… this would be a totally different kind of film if we ventured that deep, now wouldn’t it? Martin Lawrence takes his last gasps on screen as a movie star and drag Brandon T. Jackson down with him in what is one of the most wretched and unfunny movies of the year. When you try to depict a girls school as something of dignity and resort to showing key characters in skimpy and risque poses to keep audiences attentions, you know someone had their wires crossed while making this piece of garbage. And yet our societal acceptance of transsexuals still eludes us.