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Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son

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At least Robin Williams knew when to take off the fake female fat suit. Thanks to the bedraggled drag act ofMrs. Doubtfire, Hollywood saw fit to place any number of former funnymen in ridiculous rubber lady parts. The result, sadly, is this wholly unnecessary third installment in the Big Momma franchise, a film series that should have been shut down halfway through the initial offering's opening credits. Featuring a desperate for dough Martin Lawrence and any number of interchangeable co-conspirators, this witless mess has somehow managed to sustain its stifling lack of humor for more than a decade. Yes, we've had to suffer through 11 years of the comedian as gross exaggeration of an ethnic slur -- and this latest revisit is no different.

While his overeager step-son Trent (Brandon T. Jackson) is trying to get his hip hop career off the ground, FBI agent Malcolm Turner (Lawrence) is wrapping up another case, this time with the Russian Mafia involved. After witnessing a murder, Trent needs to go undercover and escape the scene. Naturally our perplexed parent has a plan. He breaks out the she-suit, and gets his jittery offspring to gal up as well. As Big Momma and her "niece", Charmaine Daisy Pierce, the duo take flight and end up at an all girl's performing academy -- which just so happens to contain a flash drive that will help them capture the criminals. As the make their way amongst the nubile young coeds, Trent falls for Haley, a wonderful singer with little self confidence. In the meantime, Big Momma must fend off the advances from janitor -- and cheerful chubby chaser -- Kurtis Kool (Faizon Love).

Was the critical reaction to Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son ever in doubt? Was there really going to be some jaded journalist of questionable authority walking out of a Friday AM screening and shouting "I've just seen the second coming of Citizen Kane...and it features a flailing stand-up comic in prosthetic lady jowls"? The answer of course is as obvious as the so-called jokes in this DOA dung heap. Whatever family value PC drivel the first two films tried to harvest is now lost in a cascade of pointless ogling and one too many fetish punchlines. While it does generate a meager smile or two, Love's uncontrollable lust for Lawrence's decidedly odd looking pseudo-woman is the stuff of nausea, not nuttiness. Indeed, director John Whitesell manages the almost unthinkable. He finds a way to turn a guy dressed as a girl into something creepy instead of comedic.

In fact, all of Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son is downright disturbing. From the guys dressed as girls hitting on girls to the opening sequence involving an Asian mailman (a check cashing Ken Jeong), the movie constantly misidentifies abuse as amusement. Even worse, it doesn't derive any originality out of the premise. It just recycles Some Like It Hot with Moscow baddies and then hopes Lawrence and Jackson can pull off the Curtis/Lemmon routine. Now there's a laugh. Honestly, Tyler Perry's Madea generates more sincere chuckles out of her/his broadsword battleaxe routine than this film even attempts - and he's not taking a massive swipe at his cultural roots in the process.

It would be nice to report that, in the end, Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son is just innocuous. Instead, it's rather insidious. Some will try support a movie like this by suggesting it's nothing more than a mindless distraction. As long as "mindless" and "nothing" are the emphasis, they may have a point. Martin Lawrence needs to hang up the muumuu. It no longer suits him -- if it ever did. 

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I Am Number Four

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On the way to the I Am Number Four screening, my son gave me the rundown on everything I might need to know going into the film. He read the popular novel on which the film is based, so I looked to him as my resident Number Four expert. "It's a lot like a young Superman," he told me. "They come from another planet and possess supernatural powers." He reported that the source material was intriguing and left him wanting more. I, in turn, am here to report that the cinematic adaptation of I Am Number Four also left me wanting more, though maybe I should say "anything" instead of "more" -- anything that remotely separated this movie from any other run-of-the-mill teen emo-actioner.

Alas, the film delivers nothing on that front; it is essentially a carbon copy of every similar-themed picture that has pandered to self-centered teen moviegoers for decades. The Superman comparison was an apt one, though I remember Clark Kent's internal struggle being far more engaging than the plight of "John Smith" (Alex Pettyfer), this film's titular character. He is the fourth in a line of gifted extra-terrestrials from a war-ravaged home planet who are being hunted and killed, in sequence, by a different race of aliens with an aim to pillage and plunder the solar system for...power or energy or whatever the typical world-domination goals are. The first three have been eliminated, and "John" is...yeah, you know. Naturally, his earthly goal is to blend in and not cause any stir that could signal he is different from the run-of-the-mill humans that surround him (hence the purposely general adopted name). The fact that he is a teen Adonis probably doesn't help in the way of "blending in." On top of that, the fluorescent high-beams that shoot out of his palms when he gets angry (you won't like him when he's angry) make it nearly impossible.

What do those light-up hands do? They can fling human beings into trees, stop moving vehicles, and make for some pretty embarrassing high school scenarios -- poor old Number Four sprouts his powers in the middle of history class and has to hide in the supplies closet to keep from causing a scene. A pubescent combination of preppy bullies and burgeoning alien-on-human love causes this other-worldly transformation to take place, an unfortunate development considering such powers will certainly bust "John's" cover. See, since his escape to Earth, Number Four has been on the run from the Mogadorians, and if the name "Mogadorians" is the kind of gobbledygook that makes your eyes roll, just wait till you see their heavily made-up appearance. These alien predators look like rejects from the Harryhausen School of Kitsch, and yet the film treats them with such earnest dread that it's impossible not to cringe every time they appear on screen.

Equally cringe-worthy is the angst-ridden romance between Number Four and "teen photographer genius" Sarah (Diana Agron), which functions as a male-centered version ofTwilight -- heavy on brooding romanticism and light on believability. The lovey-dovey subplot is just one of many distracting off-shoots tacked onto the film's basic innocent-on-the-run structure; they blend unevenly to produce an often-disastrous mess of hormonal rage and faux-testosterone. Character relationships are broadly drawn as caricatures of common stereotypes, and the action scenes are marred by hideous CGI and a style that so greatly aspires to the epic that it forgets to make basic visual sense.

Michael Bay-wannabe D.J. Caruso directed the film, and I suppose it's one point of praise that I Am Number Four -- aliens and all -- is still slightly more believable than the director's previous film, Eagle Eye. Another compliment: Caruso seems to work well with actors, since the cast acquits itself fairly well under the circumstances. Timothy Olyphant is an obvious highlight, as he always is, though the film suppresses his kink more often than not. Besides, this is not a film that can be easily saved by actors. A new script, maybe, with more attention paid to ideas -- both visual and emotional -- that could make the film feel new, even if its themes are well-worn. As it stands, I Am Number Four just blends in with the lowest common denominator. My son left disappointed, and I left incredulous.