Bringing Down the House (2003)

With a good script and director, Queen Latifah can fill a role exceptionally well, as she does in The Secret Life of Bees, Living Out Loud, and even her cardboard cutout role in Chicago. Unfortunately, Bringing Down the House is not such a cinematic exercise. Its basic premise -- an Internet romance switcheroo -- is a promising one and the movie carries off that part of it fairly well. (One of the funniest scenes in the movie is when Steve Martin opens his door and finds out who's really come for champagne -- and what a penny and a pound he's gotten himself into.) But I'm just not that interested in seeing Queen play a stereotypical oh-no-she-di'n't black girl-from-the-hood; where's the originality in being typecast? Steve really drops the ball in the last ten minutes with a lame, affected, tried-too-hard hip-hop caricature. (He was so straighforward and funny in The Jerk but paled here in comparison to his homey's chocolicious come-ons.) Eugene Levy totally makes up for everything else when he takes a shine to Queen and begins sweet-talking her. He is absolutely hilarious with his sincere, unaffected, white-bread jive-talk to his "Boo"! I think everyone needs to see the magic that is Eugene since he completely saves this movie from a 2-star purgatory for me. 3 stars.