ARE WE THERE YET?
Directed by Brian Levant
In theatres
(BOMB)
Subscribe to Hollywood North Magazine
Written By: John H. Foote
    
Some movies are just insulting.
 
  This is one of them.
  
Here we are not one month into the new movie year and already we have a candidate for the worst film of 2005. I cannot imagine there will be a worse film made this year than this, but who knows, crazier things have happened.
  
There is nothing remotely funny about this film, certainly nothing entertaining, nor anything endearing about the children in the picture. It is a nasty film, a study in cruelty, not within the film, but towards the audience as they obviously expect people to actually see this film.
  
I hated this move, and I hate all movies like it because it means the thirty or forty million spent on it could have gone to a new director with a fine screenplay who is probably still trying to get a break and wondering why this movie got the money he should have.
 
  Nick (Ice Cube) is a former pro baseball player now running a sports memorabilia store in Oregon. He has recently purchased a brand new Lincoln Navigator in the hopes of winning the heart of a lady named Suzanne (Nia Long). The downside to any relationship with Suzanne means dealing with her spoiled rotten children Kevin, age 7 and snobbish Lindsey, 11.
  
The kids believe their deadbeat dad will return any day and they do not like the idea of another man trying to win the heart of their mom. They insist on keeping mom single and accomplish this by going to war with any interested man. Somehow mom, has not caught on to their game, which makes her not only a bad mom, but stupid, stupid, stupid. When Suzanne is forced to leave for Vancouver just after Christmas she makes it clear to Nick how much she misses her kids No one knows how she could), so he decides he will take the kids to her for New Year’s Eve. Of course they ruin his plans to fly, so he is forced to drive them in his spanking new SUV.
  
At this point, one knows, without being a film critic that the SUV will never survive the trip.
  
The actors in the film as asked to portray three basic emotions” annoyance, panic or rage. Nothing else.
 
  We get all the basic tried and true elements of what filmmakers think makes a road trip movie funny. Urination jokes, crazy wildlife, mud, monotony…it just keeps getting worse.

   The director, Brian Levant has directed such awful films as The Flintstones (1994) and Jingle All The Way (1996) and never once demonstrated any talent for comedy. There is nothing in this mess to prove to me he is growing as an artist.
  
Ice Cube is a pretty good actor, but one has to wonder what he was thinking doing a film in which he is little more than a punching bag for these kids? He is not allowed to fight back or get even, or I have a hard time believing that four writers could not have found a way for him to do so. Is he trying to forge a new career in family films? He is a wonderful comic talent, but not one iota of that is here in this film.
  
A painful experience…one of the worst films I have ever screened…ever. What angers me most is that while I see films for free, I will never get the time back this film took from me.










© Copyright 2004 Hollywood North Magazine Inc.