Metascore

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 14 Critics What's this?

User Score

Mixed or average reviews- based on 81 Ratings

  • Starring: Brandon T. Jackson, Martin Lawrence
  • Summary: Big Momma is back - and this time he has big backup: his teenage stepson Trent. Martin Lawrence returns as FBI agent Malcolm Turner and as Turner’s deep-cover alter-ego Big Momma. Turner is joined by Trent, as they go undercover at an all-girls performing arts school after Trent witnesses a a murder. Posing as Big Momma and as hefty coed Charmaine, they must find the murderer before he finds them. (20th Century Fox) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 14
  2. Negative: 9 out of 14
  1. Reviewed by: Michelle Orange
    Feb 18, 2011
    60
    It goes down like a canned but genial '80s comedy: Without fanfare or much nutrition; part of your balanced breakfast.
  2. Reviewed by: Adam Markovitz
    Feb 18, 2011
    33
    Lawrence's gender-bending jokes are played out, and his slapstick is wooden and slow.
  3. Reviewed by: Mike Hale
    Feb 19, 2011
    30
    About the only honestly funny thing in the movie is Faizon Love's uncredited performance in the Joe E. Brown role, as the school maintenance man who's immediately smitten with Big Momma.
  4. Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    Feb 19, 2011
    25
    Star Martin Lawrence, now the sole remaining element from the original "Big Momma's House" 11 years ago, looks pretty tired both in and out of makeup here.

See all 14 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 16
  2. Negative: 4 out of 16
  1. Really enjoyed this film, but enough is enough for the ''Big Momma'' franchise! 1&2 were stronger but this one is still pretty amazing, and now it has a touch of music! Funny and it does have it's cliff hangers! 10 OUT OF 10! Expand
  2. Should've win a damn Oscar! The acting and screenplay is superb! Martin Lawrence is god's gift to Comedy. The way he portrays the fat black woman makes you feel as if YOU, yourself, are a fat black woman fighting crime. lol Expand
  3. 5
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Following in his father's footsteps, Trent(Brandon T. Jackson) falls for, in the immortal words of the late Rick James, "a very kinky girl," just like his dear old sweet mama. Like father, like son, indeed, or maybe it's just sloppy writing. A decade ago, in Raja Gosnell's "Big Momma's House", FBI agent Malcolm Turner(Martin Lawrence), a master of disguise, first put on his fat suit and wig as part of a federal investigation against Sherry Pierce(Nia Long), Trent's mother, whom the bureau had suspected of laundering money stolen by her thuggish boyfriend(Terrence Howard) during a holdup in the bank where she worked as a teller. Disguised as the person of interest's aunt, try as he might, Malcolm simply could not relate to his target as a 400-pound(by conservative estimates) mammy. His attention for Sherry would prove to be problematic, especially in the scene where the supposed niece crawls into bed with the undercover agent, and nearly blows his cover when their immediate closeness triggers a physiological change in the cross-dresser's anatomy. Although a flashlight explains away the first initial concentration of blood(obviously reallocated from his brain), Malcolm's state of sexual arousal persists, so when Sherry gets no answer to her inquiry about a possible second flashlight, as it's edited(the filmmaker cuts away to the next set-up), the moviegoer wonders if she eventually vacates herself from the highly-charged bed, because from her perspective, Hattie May Pierce must either be a man, or a hermaphrodite. In "Big Momma's: Like Father, Like Son", Trent(formerly played by Jascha Washington in the series' first two entries), an aspiring rap star, pays homage to his mother of indeterminate sexual orientation by dating a girl whose taste in potential partners are simpatico. Oblivious to his feminine environs, a school of the arts for girls, Trent pees standing up, just as Haley(Jessica Lewis), a talented pianist, sets foot into the dorm room, and similar to Sherry, the singer-songwriter seems unfazed by the implied organ-related anomaly at hand, since the force of the outgoing liquid in concert with the abiding urinal, would suggest a sex-based discomfiture of startling proportions. And yet, Trent goes unquestioned, despite being an obvious drag queen(Lawrence is marginably more successful as a woman), and continues to be accepted as being woman-like, which conveys an ambivalence in Haley about the second, more radical possibility. As his alter-ego Charmaine, the self-proclaimed "Prodigy" is ever mindful of staying in character as it relates to sexual boundaries, unlike his father who, after learning that Sherry had committed no crime, forgets his put-upon identity and kisses her, not particularly chaste-like, a beat too long, full, on the lips. Instead of reacting in outright horror and disbelief, Sherry gives Big Momma a look that intimates the opposite. Yes, "Big Momma's House" establishes the future Mrs. Turner as straight, but still, as a result of some slipshod writing, there's these gaps that preside over her ostensible heterosexuality. Likewise, in "Big Momma's: Like Father, Like Son", Haley falls for a man, the rapper(also a nascent Duke student), but perhaps she concurrently falls for the perceived hermaphrodite, as well. When Haley first lays eyes on "Charmaine" in the cafeteria from "Fame", she looks thunderstruck, giving the homely a frank appraisal of "her" loveliness(it must be love) with her twinkling eyes and outstretched mouth. At the year-end showcase(in other words, talent show), because Trent needs to remain incognito from his gun-totin' pursuers, he replaces himself with his doppleganger femme, who performs the hip-hop-tinged love ballad that he collaborated with Haley, a song in which the girl tells the hermaphrodite "you're the air that I breathe". Expand
  4. Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son is an alright film. It has a few good laughs and Martin Lawerence does a solid performance. The problems with this film is the story isnt really good at all, alot of the scenes that try to be funny are just not funny at all and that last two big momma where more funnier and better then this one. I would give this a low rental. Expand

See all 16 User Reviews

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