With it’s ’’Odd Couple’’ plot, Bringing Down the House would be right at home on TV: Lawyer Peter Sanderson (Steve Martin) sets up a date with the female Lawyer he’s been talking to on-line in a Lawyer chatroom. Surprise! It’s not a gorgeous blonde lagal-eagle, it’s a sassy, fresh-from-the-big-house Charlene Morton (Queen Latifah), who hopes to use Sanderson to get her conviction on armed robbery charges overturned. Charlene winds up blackmailing Peter into letting her live with him while he works on her case, and before you can say ’’You’ve got me straight trippin’, Boo!’’ she’s insinuated herself into every aspect of his life...
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with film & TV cliches has been here and done this before. The saving grace of Bringing Down the House is the winning performances of it’s Actors: Martin and Latifah have great chemistry together; You can see they were having a good time making this film. The supporting cast is uniformly excellent, especially Eugene Levy as Martin’s friend (Who becomes smitten with the straight-talking Charlene), and Joan Plowright, as the Heiress with the weird looking dog that Martin needs to impress. (Just try to keep a straight face when Plowright tries to get Latifah to sing a ’’Negro Spiritual’’ with her....). It’s too bad that every comedy seems to feel the need to have a crime-subplot/action ending, though....The characters here are strong enough that they didn’t need that type of cliche. I didn’t get any huge laughs out of the film, but I did have a smile on my face the whole time...