A criminal waste of a supremely talented cast, Adam Shankman’s Bringing Down the House doesn’t. A loud and obvious farcical mess, the movie shows no one to advantage and insults the intelligence of its audience with tired stereotypes, tasteless jokes, and hackneyed plotting that aims for the lowest comedy denominator. Fortunately, the movie didn’t do anyone’s career serious damage, but this witless comedy really doesn’t have much to offer almost ten years after the fact.
Bringing Down the House (Blu-ray)
Directed by Adam Shankman
Studio: Touchstone
Year: 2003
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 1080p AVC codec
Running Time: 105 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 English; Dolby Digital 2.0 Spanish, 5.1 French
Subtitles: SDH, Spanish, French
Region: A-B-C
MSRP: $ 20.00
Release Date: May 15, 2012
Review Date: May 10, 2012
The Film
2.5/5
Tax attorney Peter Sanderson (Steve Martin) is a shark in his business dealings but has a rather miserable personal life. Divorced and incommunicative with his children, he meets a promising woman in an on-line chat room only to find out when she arrives at his home that she’s actually Charlene Morton (Queen Latifah), an escaped convict charged with armed robbery. Claiming she’s innocent, she insists that she’s going nowhere until Peter helps to clear her name. Because he’s in the middle of trying to land a difficult billion dollar client Mrs. Arness (Joan Plowright), he can’t afford to antagonize Charlene lest she do something to embarrass him and lose him the account, so he agrees to let her pose as his children’s nanny while he works on her case. Meanwhile Charlene gets close to his teenaged daughter Sarah (Kimberly J. Brown) and young son Georgy (Angus T. Jones) and in the process helps to loosen Peter up to give him a better chance at impressing the imposing Mrs. Arness.
Hip stranger invades an uptight household and helps to straighten out everyone’s problems? It’s a scenario that’s as old as the movies, and screenwriter Jason Filardi’s adding ethnic jokes and nauseating cultural stereotypes to the mix doesn’t freshen it at all. We get the nosy neighbor (Betty White) who’s a raging bigot casting aspersions on blacks, gays, Italians, and Hispanics, and naturally the uptight Mrs. Arness who smokes a little weed and is inevitably dancing on a bar counter before the film concludes. Steve Martin covers all his usual bases: dancing his “wild and crazy guy” dance and later doing his best imitation of a homeboy as he sniffs out the real bank robber. True, director Adam Shankman does stage one bang up fight scene between Queen Latifah and Missi Pyle (who plays Steve Martin’s venomous sister-in-law) as they throw one another around a powder room, but that’s the movie’s only moment of true comic invention, the rest of it a series of raucous but increasingly tiresome situations where Charlene’s street personality disrupts the staid suburban situations she inserts herself into.
The uptight dad brought down to earth by a more with-it colleague is a familiar character for Steve Martin to play, and he’s fine if completely conventional in his performance. This was Queen Latifah’s follow-up film to her Oscar-nominated turn in Chicago, a tremendous step down in quality even if as executive producer it was a part she really wanted. And she plays it well if predictably at every turn. The movie’s one real instance of comic accomplishment comes with Eugene Levy’s Howie Rottman, a co-worker of Peter's who finds in Charlene his dream woman and his every appearance in the film pure pleasure. All of the film’s supporting ladies, Jean Smart as Peter’s ex-wife, Missi Pyle, Joan Plowright, and Betty White, play their banal roles with expected professionalism but no sense of being real flesh and blood people. It’s almost as if the people here are live action cartoon characters in search of their own animated movie.
Video Quality
4.5/5
The film’s original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 is faithfully reproduced in this 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. Sharpness is outstanding throughout with lots of details evident in faces, hair, clothes, and furnishings. Color is nicely saturated with contrast dialed in perfectly to produce accurate and appealing flesh tones. Black levels are a bit less than optimum on occasion, but that’s the transfer’s only lapse, and it’s a small one. The film has been divided into 12 chapters.
Audio Quality
3.5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix is the usual front-based soundtrack for a comedy. Though the music is spread evenly across the front channels, the rears get only a bit of the ambience of the sound while sound effects get short shrift in the rears. Dialogue is easy to discern and has been placed in the center channel. Apart from some bass beats in the rap music, the LFE channel has little to do in this sound mix.
Special Features
3/5
The audio commentary is by director Adam Shankman and screenwriter Jason Filardi. The two friends have a laugh-filled conversation watching the movie together (recorded before the film was released so they had no idea what the reception for it was going to be) and share memories of scenes deleted, locations used, and generally saying nice things about everyone connected with the movie. Not a must-listen but fans will enjoy what the two men have to say.
All of the bonus material is presented in 480i.
“Breaking Down Bringing Down the House” is a 16 ½-minute featurette showing behind-the-scenes production on the movie. Director Adam Shankman, producers David Hoberman and Ashok Amritraj along with most of the principal cast members praise each other enthusiastically and describe how much fun working on the movie was.
“The Godfather of Hop” is a tongue-in-cheek homage to actor Eugene Levy’s hip persona in the movie. This bit of fluff runs 3 minutes.
“Better Than the Rest” is Queen Latifah’s music video of the song she raps over the closing credits. It runs 3 ¾ minutes.
There are four deleted scenes which can be viewed individually or in one 4 ¼-minute grouping.
The film’s gag reel runs 4 minutes.
The disc contains a promo trailer for Frankenweenie.
In Conclusion
3/5 (not an average)
Not the peak moments in the careers of anyone concerned, Bringing Down the House offers mostly tired clichés and familiar stereotypes stuck on to its predictable culture clash comic storyline. Fans of the stars may wish to see the film again, and this new Blu-ray release offers it in its most attractive version on home video.
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
