Review

Review Date: 9-March-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Junk

Bringing Down the House (2003)

These are indeed the Dark Ages of the cinematic year. In the past month I have waded through action sludge ("Daredevil") and arty sludge ("Russian Ark") and have now rounded out the jollies with comedy sludge, aka "Bringing Down the House," in which Steve Martin plays a workaholic lawyer and Queen Latifah an escaped convict/sista from da hood who shows him how to be a better man. The premise of rich white people getting a much needed colonic through escapades with the shadier elements of society is certainly not original, but while most movies of this nature have been pretty bad ("The Ref"), some have managed to get beyond the clichés and discover a story worth watching ("Risky Business"). This film, alas, does not fall into that category.

"Bringing Down the House" is entirely unbelievable, aggressively unfunny, and sometimes uncomfortably crass. It no doubt aims to be fresh by spicing up the standard culture clash tale with a racial/sexual twist, but it has nothing new to offer and doesn't even know what it's about (or doesn't dare to be about anything truly interesting). Is the point to free Martin's character from his bland suburban lifestyle? Or to cure his loneliness? Or to reunite him with his estranged children? Apparently the goal is to kill all three of these birds with one stone: coolness. The movie's definition of this panacea is summed up below. (Feel free to cut out this table and save it for the day you want to write a shallow but marketable comedy or impress hotties in a hip singles bar.)

Cool	Uncool
Being black	Being white
Being young*	Being old
Being poor**	Being rich
Being all of the above AND female	Being any of the above AND male
Breaking & entering, kidnapping, blackmail (if you're all of the above and righteous)	Calling the cops (if you're any of the above and uptight)
Hip hop clubs	Country clubs
Working in a skyscraper with a bunch of white guys	Working in a homey little office with a black assistant

If you're young but white and rich, however, you're not cool: you're a bitch slut (female) or a corporate prick (male).
**While poor, you must have an endless supply of fabulous clothes, jewelry, and hairstyles, even if you just escaped from prison.

Now that you have the moral of the story, here's a sampling of some of its comedic situations. See the heroine, Charlene, teach a slow boy to read using a porno magazine! (Tee hee.) See the hero, Peter, cajole Charlene into putting on a maid's outfit (which he miraculously has on hand) and abase herself in front of his uptight, racist client! (Ha!) See Charlene get back by pouring laxatives into his supper! (You're killing me!) See Joan Plowright as said client smoking dope and getting jiggy with it on a barroom table! (Gasping for air!) See Charlene and a Reese Witherspoon look-alike really beat the crap out of each other in the ladies' room! (Stop! I can't take any more.)

No, seriously, I can't take any more.

While I'm the first to admit that I lean toward the side of the square, I refuse to buy the line that being fun, sexy, interesting, and true to yourself necessarily means that you have to stop being responsible, law-abiding, and drug-free (and must cast off the trappings of propriety, like decent grammar and vocabulary). "Bringing Down the House" is predicated not only on this idea, but also on wearying stereotypes (do we really need to be told that white men can't dance again?) and a patronizing admiration of the modern black woman as a creature of preternatural wisdom and potency who embodies "keeping it real" and represents a higher state of psychological and cultural awareness. (Black men can't do this because they're too threatening, what with the guns and all.) This kind of pablum strikes me as an attempt by middle class white folks (Hollywood types and the mainstream American audience) to convince themselves that they are not too stodgy or out of touch, and to rid themselves of a subconscious guilt for not really accepting the presence of blacks in their society. Yet I couldn't help noticing that the script stops short of having Charlene and Peter fall in love with each other — their sex scene is a deliberate and absurd farce — and that the white guy she does end up with (Eugene Levy) is both ludicrously comic and of a decidedly ethnic appearance. So much for having big cojones (as Charlene advises) — this unamusing movie doesn't even rock the foundations, much less bring anything down.