Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son review

Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (PG, 107 mins)
Director: John Whitesell
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The third in the inexplicably popular series in which Martin Lawrence’s FBI agent dresses up a large, elderly woman to solve a crime plumbs new depths of atrociousness, even by the generally desperate standards of family comedies these days. This time out he’s after some Russian villain, and needs to get his hands on an evidence-filled flash drive that has inexplicably been hidden inside a girls’ school. This gives him the opportunity to don his Big Momma costume and turn up at the school with his teenage son (also dressed as a woman because the baddies have him made) whereupon he’s immediately entrusted to be a house mother. The results are jaw-droppingly unfunny, plotted with nothing but laziness and contempt. Entire scenes are constructed solely around Big Momma shaking her can or falling over, and there’s not a single moment that drives the story forward or feels remotely uncontrived. Everyone involved should hang their heads in shame at creating something so unspeakably bad it’s on a level that’s actually quite difficult to comprehend.