Bringing Down the House ought to be a big, fat bomb — a predictable, thinly plotted piece of fluff cobbled together from random pieces of other movies. At times, it's almost jaw-droppingly awful. But the pairing of Queen Latifah and Steve Martin works brilliantly. She turns on the sassy charm that earned her an Oscar nomination for Chicago, while he puts on his happy feet. Working their alchemy together, they turn lead into gold, transcending the lame setup to deliver some gut-busting laughs.
Peter Sanderson (Martin) is a recently divorced, buttoned-down tax attorney, who — like the characters Martin played in Housesitter and Novocaine — finds his life turned inside out by a force of nature. After making a blind date over the Internet, Peter opens his door to what he thinks is going to be a leggy blonde lawyer. Instead, he finds Charlene Morton (Latifah), a tattooed felon, who set up the date in hopes of getting Peter to re-open her case and clear her name. He wants nothing to do with it. He is a tax man, after all. Plus, he has enough problems: He's under pressure from his firm to snare Mrs. Arness (Joan Plowright), a wealthy but persnickety elderly client. His children, teenage wild-child Sarah (Kimberly Brown) and troubled Georgey (Angus T. Jones), are tired of coming second to his job. And he's just discovered that Kate (Jean Smart), his ex-wife and love of his life, is seeing someone.

But Charlene will brook no objections. Before long, she is posing as the kids' nanny and, like a hip-hop Mary Poppins, she magically solves the family's problems while loosening up dear old dad. It is no easy task fitting in with the Sanderson clan, considering the obstacles Charlene faces: There's the little matter of her armed-robbery conviction, which keeps rearing its ugly head. There's ex-beau Widow (The Practice's Steve Harris), a violent gangbanger, who Charlene admits was "not the best boyfriend." And then there's the racism she faces constantly.

That's a point the movie knocks home with a sledgehammer, as the folks at Peter's country club and his law office — with the exception of Peter's best pal Howie (Eugene Levy), who becomes immediately smitten with the bodacious Charlene — don't even bother to hide their disdain for her. The movie reaches its nadir when Mrs. Arness recalls happy moments from her childhood when a "Negro" servant would sing spirituals, which the dotty widow remembers as something along the lines of, "The massa's gonna sell me tomorrow."

If Martin and Latifah didn't share such great chemistry, the movie could have been downright ugly. But fortunately for director Adam Shankman, they are brilliant together, and screenwriter Jason Filardi was at least smart enough to add plenty of slapstick to his otherwise lame script. Martin's always been a gifted physical comedian, and Latifah proves that she's no slouch in that department, as Bringing Down the House gives them ample opportunity to play. When Charlene tries to coach Peter in the ways of seduction or coaxes him out on the dance floor, the two are flat-out hysterical. And when Peter shows up in a homey's borrowed clothes at Widow's club, saying he's come to "take care of some bidness," in lesser hands, it could have been a cringe-inducing moment a la Warren Beatty in Bulworth. Instead, he's hilarious as the alter ego Peter invents for himself recalls nothing so much as a new version of Martin's "wild and crazy guy" persona from his old Saturday Night Live days.

In many ways, Bringing Down the House is simply not a good movie. It's too obvious, lacking all finesse. There's an undercurrent of sentimentality that reeks. And there really isn't anything new in it. But with Martin and Latifah mixing it up, it is also impossible to dismiss. Ignore the creaky story; see it for the slapstick.