BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE [2003] Steve Martin; R 15

This latest outing for 'Martin sees him paired up with likes of Queen Latifah which for the most part, works quite well. Essentially 'Martin's character unwittingly ends up getting entangled into the twisted affairs of an escaped convict (Latifah) after he is lead to believe she is a young white lawyer looking for a simple date in an internet chat room. As you can imagine this results in some very funny and sturdy laughs which are carried extremely well throughout, however... 'Bringing down the house' is fatally flawed in one small but very important area. The movies use of racist characters to try and score laughs is really un cool, and in my opinion these characters are more likely to make people feel uncomfortable than like laughing. In most instances there was no need for the movie to push such exaggerated characters so far over the line of political correctness. It is here where the movie really lets itself down. What otherwise would have a been an almost spot on light-comedy, ends up being just a little too awkward in some places. With that to one side though this really isn't that bad a film, it's nice to see our favourite silver fox on top form and of course the presence of Eugene Levy (Jim's dad from the American Pie movies) is always a good addition to any comedy. All in all it's a three star experience, but because of some bad decisions on the part of the script writers it's only really a two star film.

2/5