The biggest problem with Big Momma's house is that you can often see just how funny it should be, but the cast and crew are not able to sustain the occasional hilarious parts with any consistency.
It doesn't seem to help that Big Momma's House wants to be more than a comedy. Writers Darryl Quarles and Don Rhymer shoot for a combination of a crime comedy ala Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and a romantic comedy. But the core comedy is absurdist, while the mostly serious crime stuff is so underwritten that it would be better absent, and the somewhat serious rom-com stuff is so generic and predictable that it has all the surprise of attending Mass.
To me, the comedy being absurdist is a plus, but it doesn't mesh well with other modes. It's ridiculous, of course, that Malcolm Turner (Martin Lawrence) is trying to pass himself off as "Big Momma" Hattie Mae Pierce (Ella Mitchell). That's a large part of what makes it funny. However, director Raja Gosnell's decision to play the rest of the cast as mostly deadpan is a strange one. It leads the viewer to take the film in a more realist mode, but if you're doing that, you keep asking yourself why anyone else would believe that Turner is actually Big Momma. Gosnell should have gone for another approach during the Turner as Big Momma scenes. It's not that they're never funny, but too often the deadpan interaction breaks the humor.
However, the deadpan attitude works wonders when Mitchell is Big Momma. Mitchell is a fantastic here as a comic actress and especially Paul Giamatti as John is hilarious interacting with her. Once those too-brief scenes ended, I was wishing they wouldn't have, and when they reappeared again at the end, it made me more fully realize how much better they were. A whole film could have and should have been written around Mitchell as Big Momma with Giamatti and Lawrence interacting with her and beautiful co-star Nia Long via some other story.
Even with these problems, Big Momma is an enjoyable film. My wife enjoyed it even more than I did, we're looking forward to watching Big Momma's House 2, and we'll certainly watch this again in the future. But it's a case of moments of brilliance poking through so that you see just how much better it could have been.
It doesn't seem to help that Big Momma's House wants to be more than a comedy. Writers Darryl Quarles and Don Rhymer shoot for a combination of a crime comedy ala Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and a romantic comedy. But the core comedy is absurdist, while the mostly serious crime stuff is so underwritten that it would be better absent, and the somewhat serious rom-com stuff is so generic and predictable that it has all the surprise of attending Mass.
To me, the comedy being absurdist is a plus, but it doesn't mesh well with other modes. It's ridiculous, of course, that Malcolm Turner (Martin Lawrence) is trying to pass himself off as "Big Momma" Hattie Mae Pierce (Ella Mitchell). That's a large part of what makes it funny. However, director Raja Gosnell's decision to play the rest of the cast as mostly deadpan is a strange one. It leads the viewer to take the film in a more realist mode, but if you're doing that, you keep asking yourself why anyone else would believe that Turner is actually Big Momma. Gosnell should have gone for another approach during the Turner as Big Momma scenes. It's not that they're never funny, but too often the deadpan interaction breaks the humor.
However, the deadpan attitude works wonders when Mitchell is Big Momma. Mitchell is a fantastic here as a comic actress and especially Paul Giamatti as John is hilarious interacting with her. Once those too-brief scenes ended, I was wishing they wouldn't have, and when they reappeared again at the end, it made me more fully realize how much better they were. A whole film could have and should have been written around Mitchell as Big Momma with Giamatti and Lawrence interacting with her and beautiful co-star Nia Long via some other story.
Even with these problems, Big Momma is an enjoyable film. My wife enjoyed it even more than I did, we're looking forward to watching Big Momma's House 2, and we'll certainly watch this again in the future. But it's a case of moments of brilliance poking through so that you see just how much better it could have been.