Bringing Down The House doesn't bring house down

Bringing Down The House stars Steve Martin as Peter Sanderson, a workaholic lawyer with a recently divorced wife, Kate (Jean Smart), and two children, Sarah (Kimberly J Brown) and Georgy (Angus T Jones).

Peter doesn’t seem to have time for anything other than work, he keeps breaking promises to his children and is constantly on the phone.

But he does find time to hook up with a hot date on an internet chat room.

Not everything is what it seems on the net and “lawyergirl” Charlene is no exception. Instead of opening his door to a sexy, slim, blonde, white go-getter, he finds himself faced with a busty, sassy black woman in the form of Queen Latifah.

He’s not impressed. He wants her to leave but she makes a scene and he’s forced to let her stay. Implausible as it may sound, she agrees to help him win back his wife and kids in return for him helping to clear her name.

Despite the awful plot, Bringing Down the House does have a few laughs, most of them come from the excellent onscreen chemistry between Martin and LatifahOn the down side, the film’s racial humour is stereotypical and downright offensive.

Are we really expected to feel comfortable laughing at stuck-up white people constantly assuming that if she's black, she must be the housemaid or nanny?

That kind of racial profiling goes a long way towards cancelling out a lot of the film’s good points.

By the end, it’s hard not to feel that somewhere in there was a good film waiting to break out, it just never got the chance.

Comedy, 15PG. **