I just had a fucking baby, but I’m noT FUCKING LEAVING! (Insert Leo gif)
Adam Shankman is a surprisingly pervasive filmmaker in my life, directing a formidable run of family comedies from 2003 to 2007 with the anti-flair of a true workman, each of which just so happened to find me. A Walk To Remember was also a formative romance for me.
However, Bringing Down the House is his entry into the crass race-core subgenre from the Bush era. Remember this bunch of comedies? White Chicks? Malibu’s Most Wanted? Now Bringing Down the House, where Steve Martin plays a stuffy lawyer whose life is thrust into chaos by the imposition of Queen Latifah, an escaped prisoner.
The first two films mentioned are very high-concept, whereas Bringing Down the House is more of a movie-star vehicle, and for the better in my opinion. It’s truly an object lesson in the form: take two movie stars, three to four great character actors, contrive them to interact in animated ways, and boom - you’ve got a fun movie.
Almost every scene here delivers something juicy: a wildly impolite race bit; a sentimental cliche; some raunch; Steve Martin or Queen Latifah doing movie star shit. There are solid rhythms to the comedy, and Steve Martin pretty much never misses.
However, and I hate saying this, but you really couldn’t make this movie today for a couple of reasons, primarily due to the decline of movie stars and the rise of streaming. This would undoubtedly be a streamer, and probably not great. Who could carry it like Martin and Latifah? Additionally, the movie is very culturally dated and ugly. “White people are all about family, and black people love house parties and crime.” Steve Martin cosplaying as a gangbanger is still funny, but it’s a very childish early 2000s version of a gangbanger, talking “jive”, etc. The unenlightened child in me laughs, but the adult me knows how puerile it all is.
There’s a dinner scene with a servants-and-slavery bit that would never fly today. Is it funny? I laughed from the sheer audacity. But it’s probably too racially absurd to be made in good taste anymore. In that scene, the butt of the joke is mostly the ignorant old white lady……but the use of black stereotypes perhaps redirects some of the laughter and mockery in their direction. Like many other racial transgressions of the era, it’s less a crime of direct malice and more a crime of reducing and pigeonholing; it’s still pretty criminal though. To be made today, the film would probably need to comment on the racism instead of coddling it and going “oh geez”! I’d be curious to hear Queen Latifah’s take on this 20 years later.
But again, both Martin and Latifah are incredibly watchable, and the script is structurally sound with likable characters, clever twists, and snappy applause moments.
I just had a fucking baby, but I’m noT FUCKING LEAVING! (Insert Leo gif)
Adam Shankman is a surprisingly pervasive filmmaker in my life, directing a formidable run of family comedies from 2003 to 2007 with the anti-flair of a true workman, each of which just so happened to find me. A Walk To Remember was also a formative romance for me.
However, Bringing Down the House is his entry into the crass race-core subgenre from the Bush era. Remember this bunch of comedies? White Chicks? Malibu’s Most Wanted? Now Bringing Down the House, where Steve Martin plays a stuffy lawyer whose life is thrust into chaos by the imposition of Queen Latifah, an escaped prisoner.
The first two films mentioned are very high-concept, whereas Bringing Down the House is more of a movie-star vehicle, and for the better in my opinion. It’s truly an object lesson in the form: take two movie stars, three to four great character actors, contrive them to interact in animated ways, and boom - you’ve got a fun movie.
Almost every scene here delivers something juicy: a wildly impolite race bit; a sentimental cliche; some raunch; Steve Martin or Queen Latifah doing movie star shit. There are solid rhythms to the comedy, and Steve Martin pretty much never misses.
However, and I hate saying this, but you really couldn’t make this movie today for a couple of reasons, primarily due to the decline of movie stars and the rise of streaming. This would undoubtedly be a streamer, and probably not great. Who could carry it like Martin and Latifah? Additionally, the movie is very culturally dated and ugly. “White people are all about family, and black people love house parties and crime.” Steve Martin cosplaying as a gangbanger is still funny, but it’s a very childish early 2000s version of a gangbanger, talking “jive”, etc. The unenlightened child in me laughs, but the adult me knows how puerile it all is.
There’s a dinner scene with a servants-and-slavery bit that would never fly today. Is it funny? I laughed from the sheer audacity. But it’s probably too racially absurd to be made in good taste anymore. In that scene, the butt of the joke is mostly the ignorant old white lady……but the use of black stereotypes perhaps redirects some of the laughter and mockery in their direction. Like many other racial transgressions of the era, it’s less a crime of direct malice and more a crime of reducing and pigeonholing; it’s still pretty criminal though. To be made today, the film would probably need to comment on the racism instead of coddling it and going “oh geez”! I’d be curious to hear Queen Latifah’s take on this 20 years later.
But again, both Martin and Latifah are incredibly watchable, and the script is structurally sound with likable characters, clever twists, and snappy applause moments.
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