Bringing Down the House

reviewed by Dave

Bringing Down the House received a lot of praise for it's comedy from the mainstream press, with a few detractors that were uncomfortable with the racism found in the film. After sitting through the film, I have to say I can see their point. Race issues are played for laughs here, and sometimes the jokes work, like when Steve Martin dresses up to and
starts talking street slang to get into a club.

But other times, the racism is so over-the-top that it left me a little perplexed. Betty White plays a boisterous neighborhood bigot. Maybe it would be funny if there wasn't anything she was drawing her performance from, but there are actually people who seriously hold the attitudes she was playing for laughs. In real life, it's not funny, and here it's not
really funny either.

That's not to say the movie is terrible. If you're a Steve Martin fan, he has some good moments here that are fun to watch. And for her part, Queen Latifah is a good comedic actress. But nearly an hour in, I was still waiting for the movie to kick in and really make me laugh. The jokes are spread out a lot farther than the trailers will lead you to believe.

Consistently funny, though, is Eugene Levy. He plays a friend of Martin's character, who falls in love with Latifah's character. Eugene Levy has had made a successful career out of being a scene-stealer. If you've seen him in Christopher Guest's movies or the American Pie trilogy, you know what I'm talking about. Bringing Down the House may be billed as a Steve Martin/Queen Latifah vehicle, but Levy ends up being just as big a part of the film's comedy.

In fact, the DVD comes with an extra short little mockumentary about Eugene Levy that's based on the idea that Levy is the greatest talent ever seen in the hip hop industry. This little feature is in some ways funnier than the movie itself. You can't help but laugh as Martin turns to the camera and deadpans, "When you think of hip hop, you think of a Canadian Jew."

It's too bad the movie itself isn't as funny.