Martin Lawrence returns for the sequel to 2000 comedy that made an inexplicable amount of money at the box office and the result is just as bad.
Like the first film, it is basically an extended riff on Mrs Doubtfire with Martin Lawrence instead of Robin Williams dressing up as an older woman. The plot here sees Lawrence go undercover as a nanny to a family in the hope of thwarting a threat to national security but essentially, this is a clumsy selection of unfunny situations centred on a man in a dress. Lowlights include the improbably quick transformations into Big Momma, a seemingly endless supply of laboured and truly unfunny gags laboured gags and a cheesy underbelly of ‘family is important ‘ sentimentality. Despite all this, the stone faced reaction of the critics I saw it with was funny in a surreal way. At the climax – which seems to hint strongly of a Big Momma’s House 3 on the horizon – someone cried "Christ!" in desperation. Need I say any more? (20th Century Fox, PG)