Big Momma's House is a 2000 American comedy film directed by Raja Gosnell, written by Darryl Quarles and Don Rhymer, and starring Martin Lawrence as FBI agent Malcolm Turner. The majority of the film took place in Cartersville, Georgia, but the film was shot on location in California. The prime shooting spots were Los Angeles and Orange County. The film begins in an illegal underground dog-fighting arena in Korea, where an FBI agent named John Maxwell has been identified. John is ordered to be killed by a Korean mob boss, but is eventually rescued by his undercover partner and master of disguise, Malcolm Turner. Suddenly, a group of FBI agents storm around the arena. Meanwhile, a criminal named Lester Vesco, who was originally serving a life sentence in prison for murder and armed robbery, escapes from his cell by killing the doctor and stealing his car. The FBI assigns Malcolm and John to capture Lester by sending them to small-town Cartersville, Georgia to stake out the house of a fat, elderly African American woman named Hattie Mae Pierce, whom her friends call "Big Momma", the estranged Southern grandmother of Lester's ex-girlfriend, Sherry Pierce, who supposedly aided Lester in his original bank robbery by giving him the key to the vault. After Big Momma unexpectedly leaves town to help her ill friend within a couple of weeks, Malcolm and John sneak into her house to plant security cameras and tap the phones. Sherry later calls Big Momma's house and Malcolm disguises his voice as Big Momma in order to lure Sherry and possibly obtain a confession. The plan works, in which Malcolm and John work together on a Big Momma disguise costume before Sherry's arrival the next day. Hilarity ensues when Big Momma begins being treated like a real character by everybody else.