Bringing Down the House
There are about 15 minutes of genuine, bust-a-gut comedy in ''Bringing Down the House,'' and, surprisingly, they belong to Steve Martin, who hasn't been funny on film in years. Most of the comedian's recent energies have gone to writing off-Broadway plays and novellas about shopgirls and twee little New Yorker humor pieces. Where has the great, grinning buffoon of ''The Jerk'' and ''Saturday Night Live'' skits gone?
He shows up out of nowhere toward the end of ''House,'' in a scene where uptight Los Angeles lawyer Peter Sanderson (Martin) has to crash a rough-and-tumble black nightclub.
''Disguised'' in a gangsta skullcap and 50 pounds of borrowed bling-bling, Martin slides onto the dance floor and addresses the clubgoers in a whinny of deep-WASP street jive. The slack-jawed crowd stares, then smiles - then welcomes him in. Yes, Gene Wilder did the same thing back in ''Silver Streak.'' Steve Martin does it funnier.
The subtext's the same, though. In fact, the subtext is what it has always been in American pop culture - that white people can only find validation, get crazy, get real if they hang with black folks. But you don't want to know about subtext, you want to know if ''Bringing Down the House'' is a funny movie to see this weekend. Believe me, if I had enough time to notice the subtext, it isn't funny enough. Instead, it's depressingly tame stuff - a slow, lazy floater pitched straight at middle America by Queen Latifah, star and executive producer.
Smart career move, dumb movie. The rapper/TV star/ best supporting actress nominee for ''Chicago'' plays Charlene Morton, an escaped convict (innocent, of course) who parlays an e-mail flirtation with clueless attorney Peter into an extended stay at his Beverly Hills manse, during which she hosts a pool par-tay, bonds with his wayward teen daughter (Kimberly J. Brown), teaches his son (Angus T. Jones) how to read, and nudges workaholic Peter back into a reconciliation with ex-wife Kate (a woozy, sexy Jean Smart). The quid pro quo is that Peter finds the exculpatory evidence to exonerate Charlene.
It's all just a setup for Queen Latifah to walk regally through country clubs and white-shoe law firms while dispensing putdowns to nervous upper-class racists. Shooting these particular fish in this particular barrel can make for hilarity when done with nerve and verve. But ''Bringing Down the House'' is cursed with a dull script, cookie-cutter characters, a grocery-aisle musical score by Lalo Schifrin of all people, and bland-on-bland direction from Adam ''The Wedding Planner'' Shankman.
Shankman used to be a choreographer, but he even manages to bobble a comic kick-boxing battle between Charlene and Peter's nasty, aerobicized sister-in-law (Missi Pyle). A left-field surprise at first, the scene sputters out in a mess of poorly chosen camera angles.
What's missing from ''Bringing Down the House'' is the outrage that fuels the only worthwhile humor about race. It shows up briefly when dear old Joan Plowright, in the stock role of the moneybags grande dame whom Peter is wooing for a client, starts nostalgically warbling a spiritual her Mammy had taught her. You can hear the shocked intake of the audience's breath turn to laughter as Charlene bolts into the next room to throw things.
Reliable Eugene Levy, for his part, does what he can as Peter's freaky-deaky fellow attorney, purring ''Swing it, you cocoa goddess'' to the bemused Charlene. That's as close as the movie gets to actual sex: Every time the script hints that she and Peter might possibly be physically attracted to each other, everyone involved dances skittishly away. ''Bringing Down the House'' only looks as if it's about white characters loosening up; the real order of business is the careful commercial neutering of its black producer-star.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
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