Rating: 
Summary: Stealing a scene from an eariler movie
Review: One of the major scenes in this movie is a stolen idea from Under Cover Brother. Why is it Ok to see a white lady's face slammed against a bathroom tile, then having an old lady abducted from her home, and then a guy punched in the nose ? The scared white folk joke is a little stale now. If you don't want to get offended then get Steve Martin's The Man with 2 Brains instead. If you do like racy jokes, then get Under Cover Brother instead of Bringing down the House.
Rating: 
Summary: All the funny stuff was on the commercials
Review: Steve Martin has his own unique brand and style of comedy. Unfortunately that brand of comedy does not include this film. Martin is a comedic actor, but his funniest moments were leaked into the promos and you've already seen them if you've ever caught the advertisement on television. Eugene Levy is funny, and Queen Latifah has her humorous moments. But this film needed more. The plot isn't funny after the first half hour, and the reoccuring string of ethnic jokes gets old fast. All and all it's not a bad movie if you're bored. But I can mostly compare this film with burning yourself with a cigarette, it may fulfill your boredom but I find it m ostly painfull.
Rating:
Summary: Great, if you're a rascist
Review: I agree with the reviewer who saise that this movie is cryptic rascism. In other words "aren't blacks all uneducated thug-types(blah blah blah) but by golly-gosh in the end they're real nice people! This movie exploits blacks for laughs. I felt sick to my stomache throughout the entire movie. We can only imagine how this movie affects young black girls looking for positive role models. I can't believe in the year 2003 movies like this are being released. It's infuriating! We should all hang our heads in shame that this movie did so well at the box-office!
Rating:
Summary: Not Good...
Review: What a bad, tasteless movie! When is it funny that Steve Martin's character has to sneak Queen Latifah into his house due to the fact that she is Black and that his neighbors don't approve! This movie tries to be funny but just reinforces negative stereotypes for Black and White people. Was there one positive Black character in this movie? Queen Latifah's characters' answer to all problems in this movie was to use violence...how cute.
Rating:
Summary: are we back in the 80ies?
Review: this film is stupid, boring and a total waste of time.
the jokes are sooo old..'once you tried black you never will go back". Are we back in the eighties? camer, direction, costumes just everything is not FUNNY.
Rating:
Summary: Queen raising folks up
Review: Bringing Down The House is a comedy that tries very hard to make you smile--and sometimes it does just that. But when it was all over, I thought, it could have been so much better. I love Queen Latifah as well as Steve Martin, but I am glad that I didn't run out to the movies!
Rating:
Summary: too predictable, but Eugene Levy is golden
Review: A Film by Adam Shankman After all the money this movie made and after hearing all the hype about how funny Bringing Down the House is supposed to be, I finally got around to renting the movie. I don't know what my expectations were, but I thought it was going to be funnier than it actually was. This movie was somewhat of a let down. The premise of the movie has Peter Sanderson (Steve Martin) looking forward to meeting a woman that he met on the internet. From the picture, she looks like an attractive, professional, white woman. Normally I wouldn't mention race unless it was meaningful for the movie, and in this case it is. When Peter finally meets this woman, she turns out to be Charlene (Queen Latifah), a black woman who looks nothing like the white woman Peter expected. Charlene is in the picture, however. She is in the background being taken away in handcuffs. The humor in the movie works on the idea of the streetwise black woman clashing with the culture of the elite, rich white man and his world. Fairly standard. Charlene needs Peter to help her clear her name as she claims to have "done the time, but I didn't do the crime". There is some humor in Peter trying to get rid of Charlene and Charlene not getting out of his life. The best scenes occur when Peter's lawyer co-worker Howie Rottman (Eugene Levy) meets Charlene. Howie talks to Charlene with street slang and it just sounds funny coming out of Eugene Levy's mouth. Levy truly is golden. At the same time that Peter is trying to help Charlene (was there any doubt), he is also trying to land a huge account for his law firm, in the person of Mrs. Arness (Joan Plowright). Mrs. Arness is an eldery white woman who is a throwback to a more prejudiced time. She lives in a world of white privilege where the only black people she knows of are servants. I would like to be able to say that hilarity ensues, but it really doesn't. There is an occasional funny line, but the culture clash between Charlene and Mrs. Arness doesn't quite work. The other bit of amusement I got from this movie (aside from Eugene Levy) was Peter dressing up in some sort of a hip hop outfit and going into a club where he would not normally be able to go. He passes himself off as having some sort of street cred, and has some fairly funny lines as he tries to establish himself in the club. Steve Martin plays the straight man throughout this movie and when he breaks out to try to be hip, it comes off as funny. As I mentioned earlier in the review, the entire plot of the movie felt far too predictable and this detracted from the humor in the movie...well, that and a lot of it just wasn't funny. The movie had it's moments, but that's all it felt like, a collection of funny moments ruined by a boring, ordinary plot. On the plus side, the movie did have Betty White in a glorified cameo as a racist neighbor (Betty White always gets great lines). Even though other people surely will, I can't recommend this movie.
Rating:
Summary: Martin and Latifah sparkle in spite of lame script
Review: "Bringing Down the House" is a good example of style over substance and of good actors being able to overcome even the lamest of scripts.
Stars Steve Martin and Queen Latifah manage to entertain us in this movie, despite poor pacing by director Adam Shankman, lame jokes and the use of more racial stereotype than you can imagine. Also adding some fun are supporting actors Eugene Levy, Betty White and Joan Plowright. It's as though these performers got together and decided to put on a good show despite the script's glaring defects. As the movie opens, Paul [Martin], a divorced Los Angeles tax lawyer with two kids, is carrying on an e-mail correspondence with a woman he has never met. She calls herself Lawyer Girl and has lead Paul to believe she is a successful attorney like himself. Later, when the woman, whose name is Charlene [Latifah], shows up at his door, not only is she big and black rather than petite and white as Paul expected, she's also an escaped convict. What follows is a very predictable story with even more predictable characters - uptight white guy is loosened up by hip black chick, guy's kids' problems are solved, ex-wife takes a second look at guy, noisy neighbor gets an eyeful, rich client gets her comeuppance, etc. Martin and Latifah play easily off each other - two master comedians out to make us laugh. And laugh we do, but mostly because these two are so good at what they do. If the material had been better, this might have been a comedy classic rather than a mildly diverting movie. I suspect that where the movie goes off track is in its insistence on sugarcoating the story. Put another way, it's hard to be 'screwball' [which is what the film wants to be] and cute at the same time.
Rating: 
Summary: If This Is The Best, It Certainly Explains Something
Review: If screenwriters did their best to appeal to the intelligence and humor of vast numbers of American movie-goers, if this represents the height of their creativity, and if the fine stars in this film viewed this as a vehicle fully commensurate with the best of their exemplary skills -- if this popular movie is representative of the cerebral tastes of the public, and everyone found this to be a darned funny flick -- then it's certainly easy to see how the American public got completely duped on two major occasions, and the presidential elections of 1992 and 1996 ended up being such flagrant disasters.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Cliche
Review: Queen Latifah is certainly making her way up as an actress these days. Her portrayal as "Matron Mamma Morton" in Chicago earned her an Oscar nomination, and her role as Charlene in "Bringing Down The House" was loved by critics and audiences alike.
Sadly, the rest of the cast fails to match her natural gifts, even the usually spectacular Steve Martin, who comes up somewhat flat in his role. But its not necessarily all his fault.
The script, at times is witty but is pretty boring and predictable, using the same tired cliches about black and white, and drawing up the very same stereotypes both races have come to hate: all black people are loud and proud, with their own "lingo," grew up in the hood with a hard life and hate to show off any amount of education they may possess. And all white people are up tight, snotty, can't dance, and are secretly trying to be black - or at least, the black that society tries to say African Americans are. This is entirely annoying, especially in a world that has role models like brilliant Halle Berry and teen pop idols like Justin Timberlake [you have to admit, he can move like no other] to prove them wrong.
So as another reviewer said, unless you're a Martin or Queen Latifah fan, pass.
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