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Bringing Down The House (Widescreen Edition)

Bringing Down The House (Widescreen Edition)

List Price: $19.99
Your Price: $17.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: great movie!
Review: Queen Latifah and Steve Martin are hilarious in the film, great acting in the film! I love this movie it gives me a good laugh. I took off one star because it is mostly based on stereotypes about blacks and whites and because of the overt racism, but overall it's a funny movie.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: boring, unfunny movie; bad transfer to dvd
Review: I didn't see this film in the theater. I'm very happy about that because this film is very unfunny for a comedy. The plot is beyond cliched. I didn't laugh once in the first half hour so I went to the last scene and -- surprise -- the film ended as I would have predicted.

I mention that I didn't see this in a theater because I don't know whether the film's credits intentionally look bad (and looked that way in the theater) or whether the transfer to dvd was at fault. The words looked quite blurred at times; some names looked worse than others. Even the rest of the film (what I was willing to watch of it) seemed to suffer from a slightly jagged look.

Highly UNrecommended.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Steve Martin brings down the house!
Review: This movie is a reverse "My Fair Lady"! The story line in this film seems rountine, but Martin is really the reason to watch this film. His transformation from a civil and proper lawyer to a home boy from the 'hood had me in stitches! Eugene Levy is good in a supporting role and so is Queen Latifah. Give this movie a chance!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Number Two poser of the year
Review: This has some great acting by the one Steve Martin and the Queen does good and of course Eugene Levy does great also
You got me straight trippin Boo was right there with Wanksta and also Im Jellin like a Felon.Plus some good acting by the kid who plays Jake on 2 and a Half men this is a very interesting comedy and must be baught with Malibus Most wanted
Acting 10 Story 8 Direction 8 Action 9 Entertainment 10
Overall=45/50 This movie gets a 90% and gets 4 stars-under rated

P.S be B-Rad Gs uncle that would be an awesome segual B-Rad and his Uncle up N da Club would be the Title a good movie

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Entertaining, but not more...
Review: Steve Martin plays Peter Sanderson, an uptight lawyer, who has recently met his dream woman online who known to him as Lawyer Girl. Peter has arranged a meeting with this Lawyer Girl who is a fit, blond Ivy League graduate with the same occupation as him as he has recently divorced and need to fill the void. However, when Lawyer Girl rings on his door he is startled as it is an African-American woman that has recently escaped from prison. She insists that she has been wrongly punished as she is innocent, but Peter attempts to avoid the whole ordeal as he faces his own prejudice. Bring Down the House is an honest attempt in making a comedy about bigotry and racism in our present society, but fails in delivering the punch line. There are some very entertaining scenes, but it does not save the cinematic experience as it seems to tumble down hill as the story unfolds.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Painfully unfunny
Review: What happened to Steve Martin? He is a comic genius with more all-time classic movies on his resume than virtually anyone else could hope for. "All of Me," "The Jerk," "Roxanne"--the man has done a lot of great work across a wide range of comedic styles. And Queen Latifah is talented and likable. Witness the sadly-ignored "Set it Off," which is a much better movie than you might expect, and which really showed that Queen Latifah had great potential as an actress.

Martin and Latifah deserved a chance to do a good movie together. They could have pulled off a decent movie from a mediocre script. But instead, this is the movie you get when you take Steve Martin's lawyer character from "All of Me," suck all of the character and life out of him, and plug him into "Housesitter" with Queen Latifah as Goldie Hawn. There's even a rich old client, like in "All of Me." You get the feeling you've seen better versions of this movie before, and you're right.

We all know the gag from the commercials. Steve Martin thinks he's meeting some thin white lawyer for an internet date, but instead Queen Latifah shows up at his front door. Comedy theoretically ensues. But the movie takes its sweet time getting to this first surprise, even though we the audience know it's coming. And in that interval, man, do they lay on the exposition. Layer after layer of trite TV-movie exposition, written in such a way as to show you the path the movie is going to follow as to every single character. Even after Queen Latifah shows up, the exposition just keeps on coming, and coming, and coming. When it stops, you are hoping comedy might ensue, but it just doesn't.

In the first 30 minutes of this movie, there are a few amusing moments, and two occasions where you might actually chuckle out loud. That is a pathetic laugh ratio for any comedy, and it is unforgivable given that a truly awful script has dragged two great performers to that level.

You know the comedies where you see the preview on TV and there are 3 or 4 funny clips, and you get to the movie, and those are the only 3 or 4 funny things in it? This is one of those comedies.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: All Caught Up in the Game
Review: Bringing Down the House is predictable, but I didn't start cringing until Charlene (Queen Latifah) starting kung-fu-ing with the "skinny white ho" in the country club ladies room.

The fight scene is a pornographic centerpiece that goes on too long, but I wouldn't be surprised if it got the strongest audience reaction (cheers, whistles, teenage boys shouting "Yeah!") when the movie played in multiplexes. Charlene's nemesis, the racist predator who goes after sick old rich men for their money, wears a bathing suit like lingerie under an open robe as she demonstrates what she learned from Quentin Tarantino movies and tai-bo classes.

After minutes of brutal violence Charlene hangs the unconscious gold-digger up on a hook like a piece of meat. Comedies like this usually set someone up to be satisfyingly slapped down, but the sexism in this scene was jarring. These two women were so obviously on display. It took me out of the formula story of the rich guy (here a tax lawyer) who's losing his family because he spends all his time working, but who is taught what's really important by the outsider who forces herself into his life (here an innocent woman from the hood framed for a robbery who blackmails the lawyer into clearing her).

Another scene was disturbing. Lawyer Peter Sanderson (Steve Martin) is talking to his teenage daughter after Charlene has rescued her from a "bad boy" she snuck off to a party with who tried to force her into sex. Peter, the clueless father who thought his daughter had gone out with a preppy young man instead of a slimeball, tries to process everything she tells him. When she tells her father how far the boy got with her, you can see how relieved he is that she wasn't "violated." You don't get the impression he would abandon her if she had been raped, but it's clear he doesn't think what did happen was as bad. It's a little more okay because his daughter's still a virgin.

I watched this movie because Eugene Levy is in it, and I'd just been blown away by his performance in A Mighty Wind. Levy is funny as "freakboy," Peter's law partner who falls in love with Charlene, and Steve Martin and Queen Latifah are both very good actors. The movie isn't meant to be anything more than a dumb comedy. But once you start thinking about the way women are presented, you ask the question Peter does when he goes to The Down Low dressed up like a gansta to clear Charlene: "What's the dealio?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: COMEDY AT ITS BEST!
Review: Queen Latifah almost steals this film from Steve Martin, Eugene Levy (Best in Show & A Mighty Wind) and Betty White ( Golden Girls). Queen Latifah is wrongly accused of a crime. Steve Martin is the reluctant lawyer she chooses to help prove her innocence. And so the fun begins. Be prepared to laugh so hard you will cry as they poke fun at sterotypes, repair "Steve's" broken marriage, solve his children's problems, challenge a stuffy law firm and "mellow out" a prim multi-millionaire client. It's all done in rollicking good humor. This is a fun film. Queen Latifah is one talented lady. Joan Plowright is superb. Look for the scene where Joan, an uninvited guest, sings at the family dinner table and wants everyone to join in the next chorus. Steve and the children cringe and Queen Latifah exacts her revenge. Clever writing, fast-paced acting. These are "pros" making us laugh. What the world needs now is more laughter and fun of this genre, and a lot less violence.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: "Naw . . . it's more like a milk of mint."
Review: Adam Shankman's "Bringing Down the House" is a strange hybrid of a film. It is not a comedy, it is not a thriller, and it is not a drama. As strange as it sounds, it is all of the above. Does this make for a disorienting viewing experience? You bet. Yet, somehow, someway, the film still manages to hold together.

Peter Sanderson (Steve Martin) is an attorney who gets more than he bargains for when he arranges a date with a woman he has met in an Internet chat room. It turns out that the Charlene Morton (Queen Latifah) who shows up at his doorstep is not the woman he was expecting but rather a fugitive who is looking for an attorney to re-open her case. Peter becomes more and more frustrated as Charlene refuses to go away and finally agrees to help her if she just stops creating more trouble for him. Eventually Charlene proves to be extremely valuable to Peter as she helps him piece together his personal life. However, danger unexpectedly intrudes into Peter's life when he learns that the crime Charlene was accused of actually was not what it appeared to be.

There are a lot of aspects of "Bringing Down the House" to admire. Both Martin and Latifah are great in their parts and work well opposite each other. Eugene Levy also is hilarious in a solid supporting turn. Furthermore, the pace of the film is extremely brisk as the film never drags. However, there are a lot of aspects to the film that also causes you to scratch your head. Peter's evolving relationship with his family is supposedly an important element of the screenplay but none of his family members are adequately developed into anything substantial. In addition, the supporting characters of Mrs. Arness (Joan Plowright) and Mrs. Kline (Betty White) are not funny and come perilously close to being outright offensive. Also, the subplot involving Peter's sister-in-law (Missi Pyle) is unnecessary. Still, "Bringing Down the House" is passably amusing. It is no masterwork by any stretch of the imagination but there is enough good stuff in here to make watching it worthwhile.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: One to Forget
Review: I have seen several Steve Martin movies and this is by far the worst. Martin begin a dialogue with a lady on the Internet. When he finally wants to meet her, he makes a date at his house with his "blonde" blind date. Instead Queen Latifah shows up.

It turns out that Latifah is a fugitive on the run and she wants Martin to help her. Too many corny scenes follow, especially the annoying antics of Latifah. Eugene Levy is not at all funny as Martin's friend who craves Latifah. Definately not anywhere near his American Pie and National Lampoon's Vacation roles.

Not even worth renting!


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