Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son review

Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (PG, 107 mins)
Director: John Whitesell
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The third in the inexplicably popular series in which Martin Lawrence’s FBI agent dresses up a large, elderly woman to solve a crime plumbs new depths of atrociousness, even by the generally desperate standards of family comedies these days. This time out he’s after some Russian villain, and needs to get his hands on an evidence-filled flash drive that has inexplicably been hidden inside a girls’ school. This gives him the opportunity to don his Big Momma costume and turn up at the school with his teenage son (also dressed as a woman because the baddies have him made) whereupon he’s immediately entrusted to be a house mother. The results are jaw-droppingly unfunny, plotted with nothing but laziness and contempt. Entire scenes are constructed solely around Big Momma shaking her can or falling over, and there’s not a single moment that drives the story forward or feels remotely uncontrived. Everyone involved should hang their heads in shame at creating something so unspeakably bad it’s on a level that’s actually quite difficult to comprehend.

Death at a Funeral review

Death at a Funeral (15, 92 mins)
Director: Neil LaBute
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

As remakes go this has to be one of the strangest; an American re-run of a British comedy that came out less than three years ago which, though nearly identical in plot, has managed to lose everything that was good or funny about the original. It’s set entirely at a funeral where the extended family has gathered to bury Chris Rock’s father. The trouble starts when one of the guests (James Marsden, getting reasonable mileage) inadvertently takes a hallucinogenic pill and Peter Dinklage, reprising his role from the original, turns up to throw an unexpected spanner in the works. What should be high farce is botched in execution by a thoroughly bizarre choice of director in Neil LaBute, not exactly known for his lightness of touch. So it’s leaden when it should zip, timing is entirely absent and every burst of unfunny physicality is punctuated by a sitcom score. It’s broad, infinitely unsubtle and everything is dreadfully forced, not helped by some actors (Martin Lawrence, Tracy Morgan and Danny Glover being the worst offenders) mugging and screeching for all they're worth.