Peter Sanderson (Steve Martin) is a divorced, straight-laced, uptight attorney who still loves his ex-wife (Jean Smart) and can’t figure out what he did wrong to make her leave him. However, Peter’s trying to move on, and he’s smitten with a brainy, bombshell barrister he’s been chatting with on-line. However, when she comes to his house for their first face to face, she isn’t refined, isn’t Ivy League, and isn’t even a lawyer. Instead, it’s Charlene (Queen Latifah), a prison escapee who’s proclaiming her innocence and wants Peter to help clear her name. But Peter wants nothing to do with her, prompting the loud and shocking Charlene to turn Peter’s perfectly ordered life upside down, jeopardizing his effort to get back with his wife and woo a billion dollar client. In the end, the unlikely pair has the chance to put each other’s lives on higher ground…

Bringing Down the House showcases an unlikely pairing of Steve Martin and Queen Latifah and creates a mix that is a certain recipe for disaster and of course, hilarity. But Bringing Down... is a comedy that doesn't squeak by without being a little brought down by itself...

Steve Martin is a comedy veteran audiences are still familiar with today even as his age finally starts to match his premature white hair. Queen Latifah, on the other hand, is a much younger artist, who originally began her career in music some years ago and has since made a name for herself as an actress with even getting nominated this year for an Oscar for her role in the award-winning Chicago. Here we team up the ghetto superstar with a prince of comedy for a Liar Liar meets Rush Hour meets You've Got Mail comedy.

Like Liar Liar, a too-busy-for-his-family lawyer is hoping to get his life back in order when, like in You've Got Mail, he meets a woman over the web he was never expecting, only to team up with a ghetto-talking partner that is wonderfully mismatched, somewhat like in Rush Hour. So how does all of these tie in together? The rigid Martin plays off well with the loose and free-spirited Latifah. The acting was great despite Latifah's character seeming a little over the top at times. Eugene Levy did a great job as Martin's unorthodox black-women-loving partner. The thing the film had going for it most was heart. And while the struggles Martin's children went through was handled much more powerfully in the touching John Candy vehicle Uncle Buck, this film was moreso about the conflicts between Martin and Latifah and everything else was secondary.

Content-wise, the language wasn't too bad for a film like this. However, sexual material is what bogged down the film's enjoyability the most with mostly dialog-related references. The worst involves Latifah's character Charlene coaching Martin's character Peter on how to win his ex-wife back, including teaching him how to talk dirty and come on to her (and included grabbing Charlene's chest awkwardly and placing large "balls" down his pants to signify manhood). Besides dialog-related situations, we also see Peter's son Georgey reading a porno magazine that Charlene gave to him to teach him how to read, as such he reads some offensive material that is played for laughs but at the same time distasteful. Violence is moderate including a sequence where Charlene and Peter's evil sister-in-law Ashley get into a pretty hefty brawl.

Aside from the content-related drawbacks, the film offered an enjoyable story with several good laughs (especially Peter's experience at a party near the film's end). With some more wholesome content, this could have been a really excellent film. With content in mind, I couldn't offer the film too high of a rating. A good comedy, but surely not Martin's best work, you may want to wait till this film is on video to watch it without some of the junk (using an editing program like ClearPlay), or to miss it entirely.