There’s nothing like a good Martin Lawrence comedy. And here’s further proof.

Responsible for more duds than a battery recycling plant, the jug-eared japester adds another to the pile with this loud and phoney celebration of family values.

Going by the name ‘Dr RJ Stevens’, TV guru Roscoe (Lawrence) is currently Hollywood’s hottest property following his splashy engagement to Bianca (Bryant), the ultra-competitive and image-obsessed winner of reality show Survivor.

Since it's his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, Roscoe reluctantly takes Bianca, her fluffy pooch and his young son Jamaal back home to Georgia for the weekend.

He hasn’t visited his family for nine years. It’s easy to see why. They make The Nutty Professor’s Klumps look like the Waltons.

First we have the pleasure of dodgy cousin Reggie (Mike Epps) and his girlfriend, the film’s token white bimbo.

Then it’s on to the Jenkins place where Mamma (Margaret Avery, whose Oscar nomination for The Color Purple must be a very distant memory) extends the welcome but curmudgeonly Papa (Jones) – peeved that Roscoe eschews his given name - does not.

Rounding out the rest of the salad-dodging clan are big brother Otis (Clarke Duncan), obnoxious lardbucket sister Betty (Mo’Nique) and oily cousin Clyde (played by the oxymoron that is Cedric the Entertainer), whom Papa has always favoured over Roscoe.

Old wounds are immediately reopened when Clyde shows up with Roscoe’s childhood love Lucinda (Nicole Ari Parker).

Level-headed Lucinda’s relationship with the odious Clyde is just one of the falsehoods in this misguided attempt at dealing with an inferiority complex by writer-director Malcolm ‘cousin of Spike’ Lee.

Populated with thoroughly unlovable characters, it really hits the hypocrisy alarm when Jones' perpetually disapproving Papa lectures Roscoe on the dependability of friends and family.

Lawrence has made a career of slack-jawed mugging, but it’s impossible for anyone else to emerge with any dignity from a succession of pratfalls and scuffles strung together with doggy sex, fat jokes and casual misogyny.

“This is just a mess,” moans Mamma Jenkins. True dat.

Elliott Noble