Movie Review After April

After April (2001) 

Directed by Brian Evans 

Written by Ryan Farley 

Starring Michael McKiddy, Angela Duffy 

Release Date December 2nd, 2002 

Published December 2nd, 2002 

AIDS is an issue that has disappeared from mainstream consciousness. That doesn't mean that it isn't still killing people and destroying lives because it certainly is, especially in urban communities. What that means is that AIDS is no longer the cause celebre it once was. Hollywood stars still wear their fashionable AIDS ribbons and show up for the occasional benefit. Still, AIDS statistics that were once front page news are now buried in the back and research into a cure for AIDS languishes even as great strides continue to be made.

In the movie universe you would think AIDS has been cured, because few of us can recall the last time we saw a movie with an AIDS afflicted character. The film After April does not come out with an agenda aimed at bringing AIDS to the forefront once again. Moreover it deals with the disease in an intelligent and emotional way one hopes will make people remember this most horrible of killers and the lives it destroys.

After April is the brainchild of director Brian Evans and writer Ryan Farley. The film stars Michael McKiddy as Patrick, an inner city white kid whose parents are non existent and whose drug habit was an all consuming problem until he met Eve, played by Angela Duffy. While Eve is also a junkie they both would like to get clean and leave their inner city home. Just one week from starting a new life with the help of Eve's Aunt, Patrick gets some very bad news. 

A letter informs Patrick that the local blood bank could not use his blood for unspecified reasons. Determined to know why his blood was rejected Patrick and Eve go to the blood bank and Patrick intimidates a bureaucratic nurse into telling him what happened,. Patrick's blood was rejected because he has HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Angry and depressed Patrick begins to search for the girl he is certain infected him, April, played by Stephanie Slongo. A fellow junkie, April has become a prostitute since she met Patrick. In flashback, we see Patrick meet April in a bar where she entices him into an alley where they have unprotected sex.

Knowing that Patrick brought this onto himself makes him difficult to sympathize with but McKiddy's sad desperate performance makes Patrick a frighteningly real character. McKiddy's Patrick is like someone we know, anyone who sees this film will see traits that they recognize in people who are close to them. Much like Brad Renfro's performance in Bully, McKiddy's raw realism gives After April more affect than you’re expecting.

Angela Duffy as Eve is far more than your average movie girlfriend. Not merely a plot device Eve is a fully fleshed out character who allows the audience to care about Patrick because she cares about him. Even in Patrick's most extreme moments Eve stays with him not because she is weak or needy but because she truly cares about him.

The cast is rounded out by Ethan Jordan as Carney, Patrick and Eve's dealer until they decided to clean up. Carney is also April's dealer so when Patrick goes looking for her Carney is the first person he goes to. Surprisingly philosophical for a dope dealer, Carney combines an unusual social conscience with his antisocial dealings. Carney doesn't like what has happened to his neighborhood, but openly admits that he is part of the problem. He honestly respects Patrick's attempt to clean up and when he sees Patrick slipping as he searches for April, Carney offers wise council. Though his rap about how having inner city kids killing each other is what the government wants makes the character look ridiculous, Jordan's honest well delivered performance keeps the character grounded and real.

The unique combination of revenge thriller and an issue as serious as HIV makes After April one of the most fascinating films I've seen in a long time. The film’s direction and production values could stand for improvement but as it is, After April is a raw and thought-provoking film. A film with more than just an idea, more than just a gimmick, April brings the tragedy of AIDS to the streets in a way that is shocking and attention grabbing without being sensationalistic or preachy. This is a very good movie.

Movie Review 13 Going on 30

13 Going on 30 (2004) 

Directed by Gary Winick 

Written by Josh Goldsmith, Cathy Yuspa 

Starring Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo, Judy Greer, Andy Serkis

Release Date April 23rd, 2004

Published April 19th, 2004

Being a fan of TV's “Alias,” I am well aware of the tremendous talents of Jennifer Garner. Her role in last year’s comic book adventure Daredevil showed she could easily transfer that talent to the big screen. Now, with the big screen comedy 13 Going on 30, Garner has the biggest test of her talents yet. Playing what is essentially a re-imagining of Tom Hanks' role in 1987's Big, Garner shows a comic flair that she has not had the opportunity to show before. It's a risky departure and a surprisingly successful one as well.

In 13 Going on 30, Garner is Jenna Rink, whom we first meet at the age of 13 as an insecure kid who hopes to become part of a popular clique. She has her chance when the popular kids promise to attend her thirteenth birthday party. However, her popularity comes with a price as she alienates her best friend Matt. Worse yet, the popular girls were only joking about being her friend and instead abandon Jenna as she awaits her first kiss with one of the popular boys in a game of “seven minutes in heaven.” This leaves Jenna stranded and crying in her closet wishing that she could be 30 years old like the girls in her favorite magazine.

When next we see Jenna, she is grown up and very confused. Her wish has come true and she is now 30 years old, only she doesn't remember anything between her wish in the closet and waking up in her fabulous New York apartment. Soon she finds out that she has become an editor at her favorite magazine, Poise, and she became and remains friends with the popular clique from her high school. However she is no longer friends with Matt (Mark Ruffalo) who has grown up to become a photographer and is soon to be married. In her confusion, Jenna discovers that hurting Matt was the biggest mistake in her life and that wanting to be popular has cost her real happiness.

Not exactly groundbreaking storytelling. However as it is played with such lively joy by Jennifer Garner, this trite, overly sweet story is surprisingly funny. Garner tosses her dignity to the curb and goes full speed ahead into being a thirteen-year trapped in the body of a thirty-year-old. Not only is she believable, she is very funny. Garner infuses the role with more acting talent than you expect for such light material. She’s also very well matched with Mark Ruffalo whose credibility as dramatic actor gives the film’s melodrama a needed gravity.

Director Gary Winick borrows effectively from Penny Marshall's Big, combining it with the bubbly effusiveness of Legally Blonde for a comic fantasy romance that is sweet without being overly precious. There are big laughs in the film but more importantly there are big smiles, especially the ones you leave the theater wearing.

My only real problem with the film is it's title which evokes those bad eighties body switching movies like 18 Again or Vice Versa. While those films are in this one's spirit, this is a different and far better film. It's not the most original movie and there are few cringe-inducing moments of over the top cuteness, but nothing so bad that they can't be overlooked. 

There is too much about the film that works for me to care about the moments that don't. 13 Going On 30 is a shockingly good movie that I am very pleasantly surprised to recommend.

Movie Review: Boogeyman Starring Barry Watson

Boogeyman (2005) 

Directed by Stephen Kay 

Written by Eric Kripke, Juliet Snowden, Stiles White

Starring Barry Watson, Emily Deschanel, Lucy Lawless

Release Date February 4th, 2005 

Published February 5th, 2005 

There is a little known legend about a being called Zwarne Piet who it is said was a counterpart to Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus. Zwarne Piet was said to punish with a beating the children that Saint Nick deemed naughty. The legend of Zwarne Piet (there is no other english translation I am aware of) is one of the many entomological beginnings of the Boogeyman or man in the closet myths.

Every child was certainly made aware of the boogeyman whether it was from friends at a slumber party or siblings attempting to scare one another with a frightening bedtime story. The horror flick Boogeyman, starring Barry Watson, attempts to mine this childhood chestnut for some modern scares. Unfortunately, my description of Zwarne Piet has more scares than anything in this derivative PG-13 borefest.

A boy lies in bed, scared silly. Everything in his bedroom, in the dark, takes on a sinister shadow--his childhood toys, his robe laid across a chair, and of course his large, oaken, half-closed closet door. Poor  Timmy, it seems, has just recently learned of the Boogeyman from his dad (Charles Mesure). This is dad's charming way of teaching Timmy a lesson of some kind, but when the legend turns real it's dad who become the boogeyman's victim, right before Timmy's innocent eight-year-old eyes.

Fifteen years later, Tim (Barry Watson) is a slightly neurotic magazine editor with a beautiful girlfriend, Jessica (Tory Mussett), and a deep-seated fear of closets. Years of therapy have finally convinced Tim that his dad simply disappeared on his own and that the boogeyman was merely his imagination. However, when Tim's mom dies and he heads home, the boogeyman is waiting for him.

Director Stephen T. Kay working from a not-so-original screenplay by Eric Kripke, renders Boogeyman in homage to any number of hackneyed horror flicks and specifically Kubrick's The Shining and Speilberg's Jaws. Not that Boogeyman is any where near as good as those two films; rather, Kay obviously watched both of them prior to making his movie because aspects of each populate Boogeyman.

The Shining can be seen in the many whip-pan camera moves and arty, over-shoulder camera perspectives Kay employs. Occasionally Kay does capture a striking image but so much of Boogeyman is a reproduction of horror cliches that the occasional artful camera shot is rather meaningless in the long run. There is certainly nothing in Boogeyman as eye catching as Kubrick's elevator of blood.

The homage to Jaws seems more of an act of necessity than of actual tribute. One of the awesome memories of Jaws is how Speilberg kept the shark offscreen for most of the picture. Kay similarly keeps his Boogeyman under wraps until the very end. This Boogeyman, sadly, is no Bruce the shark.  ("Bruce" was the name Speilberg allegedly gave the mechanical monstrosity.) The Boogeyman is a mess of CGI shadows suggestive of a guy in blackface screaming.

Barry Watson was once a hot commodity in Hollywood. After making a splash as a hunk on the early seasons of 7th Heaven, Watson attempted to subvert the teen idol image thrust upon him. Unlike Johnny Depp before him, who shook a similar image by burying himself in complicated parts in underseen indie flicks, Watson cut his hunk hairstyle, grew some stubble and began making really bad movies.

First was the insipid college comedy Sorority Boys and now Boogeyman. I doubt Barry will have the teen idol stuff to overcome anymore. Another role like the one he plays in Boogeyman and I'm sure he will be begging the folks at 7th Heaven to take him back.

The PG-13 rating is the scourge of the modern horror film. Now that movies such as The Grudge have shown the box office viability of the PG-13 rating, more and more horror flicks are cutting the gore and nudity of the horror classics. Regrettably, these films not only lose the gore and nudity--they also forget the scares. Boogeyman is the latest in a growing genre of horror-less horror films that trade in established horror conventions for mood lighting and atmospherics to ever-diminishing success.

Why poor Emily Deschanel, now the star of the terrific procedural drama Bones on the Fox network, chose to co-star in this abysmal attempt at childhood scares is a mystery. Deschanel's earthy charm and natural wit are lost in this wretched, weak-kneed frightfest. Playing Watson's childhood friend and potential love interest, Deschanel seems to barely be in control of her gag reflex as she follows Watson from one tepid bloodless scare to the next.

Whether it is the neutered PG-13 scares or the fact that I simply loathe Barry Watson, I really hated Boogeyman. This is the latest in a series of tired, blood free, boob free horror flicks aimed at teenagers of a slightly less-than-discerning taste.

Movie Review: Cursed

Cursed (2005)

Directed by Wes Craven 

Written by Kevin Williamson

Starring Christina Ricci, Josh Jackson, Jesse Eisenberg, Scott Baio, Judy Greer, Shannon Elizabeth

Release Date February 25th, 2005 

Published February 24th, 2005

As far as career low points go I would have thought Director Wes Craven could not go any lower than his sad and long forgotten Eddie Murphy vampire flick Vampire In Brooklyn. However after seeing Mr. Craven's new werewolf picture Cursed I find that even if you have previously dug to the bottom of the barrel you can always lift the barrel to go a little lower.

Cursed is a shameful example of a once great Director in his most faded glory. In attempting to recreate the past success of the Scream series Craven has crafted a woefully inept spectacle of bad special effects and reteamed with writer Kevin Williamson, a return to the kind of in-the-know humor that made Scream hip.... in '96.

Christina Ricci stars as Elly, a TV producer raising her little brother Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg) after the death of their parents. When the kids are involved in a car accident, they are attacked by some kind of beast that annihilates another woman (Shannon Elizabeth, in a cameo nod to Drew Barrymore in Scream). Jimmy claims the beast was a werewolf and the cops and his sister are unsurprisingly skeptical.

Jimmy becomes obsessed with werewolf lore, because someone in werewolf movies has to provide exposition, spending hours researching the side effects of a non-fatal werewolf attack. Naturally there is the moonlight thing, an aversion to silver and a heightened sense of smell especially when it comes to blood. Soon both brother and sister are showing some supernatural side effects and only killing the wolf that attacked them can save them from a lifetime of moonlight killing.

Josh Jackson plays Elly's boyfriend who has a dark secret of his own and Judy Greer (The Village) plays a bitchy rival to Elly in her job as a producer on the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn. The cast also boasts cameos by Kilborn, Lance Bass of N'Sync, pop star Mya and Scott Baio (Yes, Scott Baio).

Memo to Kevin Williamson, simply putting Scott Baio in your movie is not funny. Give him something funny to do or say or don't do it at all. Mr. Baio's cameo is a throwaway, amongst many throwaway jokes that fall flat throughout Cursed.

The screenplay by Kevin Williamson attempts to mine comedy from Elly's gig as a producer on the Kilborn show but with Kilborn having left since the film wrapped more than a year ago, the comedy is embarassingly stale. Williamson also attempts to revive the running gags from the Scream series with Shannon Elizabeth's brief cameo and quick death and of course that knowing ironic horror movie humor that was his forte more than 10 years ago but has failed to mature much in the same way Mr. Williamson's career has failed to mature toward the success so many expected for him after the twin hits Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer.

It's not just the humor that falls flat in Cursed but also the career of the once very promising Christina Ricci. After her Prozac Nation was shelved before being dumped to cable and forgotten, it seems Ms. Ricci is longing for the kind of paycheck an actor can only get when they compromise their talent. Cursed however is not merely a compromise.  It's a total sellout. Never before has Ricci been so lifeless and banal on screen.

Ms. Ricci is not alone in the sellout department. It seems everyone from former Dawson's Creek star Johua Jackson to pop star Mya to the lovely Judi Greer were all willing to throw actorly credibility to the wind to gather a paycheck. Only Greer's performance could be called memorable, but not memorable for the right reasons. Ms. Greer's performance is so embarrassing she may want to leave it off her resume in the future.

The CGI effects employed in Cursed to bring the various werewolves to life are seemingly what Ed Wood might have created had he the chance to use the technology. All of the films werewolves are bad cartoons and because of the restrictive PG-13 Rating the film cannot distract the audience from the terrible effects with blood and gore. PG-13 simply does not suit the man who arguably has spilled more cinematic blood in history than any other director. The film's rating and lack of old school blood and guts is clearly a box office related compromise between Craven and the studio Dimension Films.

Not that an R-Rating could have done much for what is the worst outing of Wes Craven's long career. The master of horror delivers a movie with a thuddingly uninteresting script, little to no real scares and CGI effects, never his strong suit, that are some of the worst I have seen in a long while. Cursed plays not like a Wes Craven movie but rather like one of those early 2000's movies that he simply slapped his name on like They or Dracula 2000: bad, low-budget horror that capitalizes off the name of the man once called the Master of Horror. That name has lost a great deal of its cache with Cursed, one of the worst films of the 2004.

Movie Review Open Season

Open Season (2006) 

Directed by Roger Allers, Jill Cullen

Written by Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman, Nate Maulden

Starring Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, Gary Sinise, Debra Messing, Jon Favreau 

Release Date September 29th, 2005

Published September 30th, 2005

Sony Pictures Animation is brand new to the computer animation game. Their first feature Monster House, with producer Robert Zemeckis, was a fun, clever, kid friendly concept that would have benefited from a better release date. The second feature from Sony is equally as fun, though not quite as clever, and shows that Sony may be the first big studio animation arm to be truly competitive with Pixar in terms of creating fully integrated animated films with appeal beyond the child audience.

Monster House is a better, more accomplished example of the quality of Sony's work, but the new animated picture Open Season has just enough quality work to show Sony's potential.

Martin Lawrence gives voice to Boog in Open Season, a bear who has been domesticated. Living in the garage of a caring forest ranger (Debra Messing); Boog has his TV, nine square meals a day and he's even learned how to use the toilet. His domestic bliss is upended when he meets Elliott (Ashton Kutcher). Poor Elliott has been captured by an evil hunter (Gary Sinise) and strapped to the hood of the hunters truck.

Boog, on a day in the city with his forest ranger pal, see's Elliott and helps him escape. Elliott, thinking he has made a new best friend forever, follows Boog home and entices him out of the garage for a night on the town. The two end up vandalizing a mini-mart, an offense that causes the local sheriff to force the forest ranger to release Boog into the wild.

Never having had to survive on his own, Boog finds his new life in the forest to be, pardon the pun, un-bear-able. So, with Elliott's help, Boog tries to find his way back to the garage. Along the way he earns the ire of almost every other creature in the forest, especially after he crushes the local beaver dam and flushes everyone into the valley where hunters are awaiting the opening of hunting season.

Part of the strategy of Sony Pictures Animation is working with talented artists with great track records. On Monster House they worked with a rookie director, Gil Kenan, but backed him up with the proven talent of producer Robert Zemeckis. On Open Season Sony worked with director Roger Allers who directed the all time animated classic The Lion King.

Open Season does not compare with The Lion King in terms of the quality of its storytelling but the animation of Open Season is at times the equal of any and all of the great animated pictures, digital or otherwise. The forest landscapes of Open Season are absolutely gorgeous which is strangely at odds with the otherwise mundane  talking animals storyline. The animation tends to overwhelm a story beneath the dignity of the artistry of the animation.

Not that the story of Open Season isn't cute or funny, it is, but the grand animation of Open Season would be better suited to a more dramatic feature, ala The Lion King.

Part of the fun of Open Season is the voice work of Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher. These two actors, who have struggled mightily in their live action work, are dynamic vocalists in Open Season. Lawrence does a terrific job of channeling the child-like innocence of Boog and combining it with an attitude of entitlement of a very spoiled child. As Boog becomes more mature, Lawrence channels his usual bravado and good humor into Boog to great effect.

Kutcher is a natural for voicework. He is naturally over the top and exemplifies boundless energy, as he so often showed on That 70's Show. Elliott, like TV's Michael Kelso, is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he has a big heart and that comes through in his voice. He just wants to be liked, he just wants to make friends and in that sense he is very reminiscent of another beloved animated sidekick Eddie Murphy's Donkey from the Shrek movies.

If the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals made an animated feature, I'm guessing it would look alot like Open Season. The film is like PETA propaganda. The hunters are mouth breathing morons and seething villains who hunt for the joy of the kill and not merely for sport. The animals are, of course, cute and smart and essentially more human than their human counterparts.

I am a little concerned about one thing about this animated tale of a grizzly bear who is kept as a pet. There was a documentary last year called Grizzly Man in which a man named Timothy Treadwell failed to understand how dangerous the grizzly bear truly is. Treadwell convinced himself that the bears were his friends, he even named them like pets. Timothy Treadwell died, eaten by his pals the grizzly's. Parents, be sure to make your children understand that Grizzly bear's are not pets.

If Sony Pictures Animation is going to compete with the gold standard set by Pixar they will need to do a little better than Open Season. That said, Open Season; in its lovely animation and wide appeal story, does demonstrate the potential of Sony's animated arm. Working with talented directors like Roger Allers is definitely a sign of the commitment of the company to the quality of their work.

The kids will love the talking animals and the adventure stories and mom and dad won't be bored thanks to the remarkable animation that often invites audiences just to gaze at it forgetting for a moment the mundane story.

Movie Review: Dreamer Inspired by a True Story

Dreamer Based on a True Story (2005)

Directed by John Gatins

Written by John Gatins

Starring Dakota Fanning, Kurt Russell, Kris Kristoffeson, Luis Guzman, Elisabeth Shue 

Release Date October 21st, 2005 

Published October 21st, 2005 

In her short life young Dakota Fanning has not only become a movie star, she has proven herself to be a very capable actress. At a slight 11 years old Fanning has had several starring roles ranging from indies to blockbusters. She has crossed genres from light comedy in Uptown Girls to the Sci-Fi of War of the Worlds to the thriller Man On Fire. She has starred alongside elites like Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington and Robert DeNiro and often been as good or better than her more veteran co-stars.

Fanning's newest film, Dreamer: Inspired By A True Story, marks the first time Fanning can claim a film as her own starring vehicle. This little horse that could drama is at times more than a little sappy and sentimental but Dakota Fanning's performance makes the little extra schmaltz worth it.

In Dreamer: Inspired By A True Story Dakota Fanning stars as Cale Crane the daughter of a horse trainer, Ben Crane played by Kurt Russell. Living on a Kentucky horse farm with no horses, Cale dreams of one day filling the big empty barn. However, a family secret held between her father and grandfather Pop Crane (Kris Kristofferson) makes this dream seemingly impossible.

Though Pop also has a home on the property, father and son have not spoken more than a few words in years. Despite the rift Cale is allowed to have a good relationship with her grandfather who tells her fantastic horse racing legends and stories about the farm when there were horses raised there. This is another source of father-son tension. Ben has tried to keep his daughter at a distance from horses in hopes of shielding her from the kind of horse related trauma he experienced early in his life.

Whether it's her grandfather's stories or the fact that she's a little girl and all little girls love horses, nothing can keep Cale from joining her dad at the racetrack. Sadly, on her first visit to the track, Cale witnesses a horrible incident. Ben's horse Sonador, spanish for "dreamer", falls in a race and breaks a leg. The standard practice in this case is euthanasia however Ben refuses to put the horse down in front of Cale. Ben's refusal leads to a heated exchange with his boss, Palmer (David Morse), which ends with Ben being fired.

Using his severance pay Ben buys Sonador to keep her from being killed. Now the family's entire future rides on rehabbing Sonador so she can be used for breeding. However, when something miraculous happens, Sonador may just do more than breed a champion, she may in fact still be a champion.

The story is typical of the rote sports movie genre that director John Gatins has made his specialty. Though Dreamer is Gatins first directorial effort he was the writer behind Coach Carter, Hardball and Summer Catch. He knows all of the beats and rhythms of the genre, maybe even too well. The story is belabored and predictable but Gatins is blessed by his amazing cast which makes the bitter pill of cliche go down easy.

Dakota Fanning continues an unfortunate trend in her young career where her work outclasses the material. Dreamer is cloying, manipulative and entirely by the numbers but Fanning is believable, whip-smart and eminently watchable. Her sweetness never bubbles over into toothache territory and her cuteness is measured by her deep eyes filled with wisdom beyond her years.

The supporting cast greatly aides Fanning's performance. Kurt Russell continues to be the most underrated actor working today. Someday Russell is going to find just the right role to break him out of the mold of everyman and into the realm of the award-worthy actor he truly is. Kris Kristofferson is his reliably crusty self perfectly cast as the struggling father and doting grandfather.

The only disappointment in the supporting performances is poor Elizabeth Shue. Playing Fanning's mother, Shue's role revolves around nagging Russell's character to take more of an interest in their daughter. She comes on screen to frown when things look grim and smile when things look bright. The character has no depth or life of her own and is far too underwritten for an actress of Shue's talent.

Dreamer is a good natured and sweet story with a natural appeal to children, especially young girls. All little kids love animals but there is a unique connection between little girls and horses and Dreamer lovingly portrays this connection. Watching my sisters growing up and playing with toy horses and now my young nieces doing the same makes me wonder what the connection between girls and horses is.

Freud claims it's some kind of sexual thing which just seems creepy to me. I would like to believe it's something more complex than some base pleasure seeking. My mother claims it's about the eyes of a horse, empathetic pools that seem understanding and feeling. Also, horses need a great deal of care in grooming and feeding which could set off a mothering instinct. Whatever the reason, Dreamer taps the emotions of this unspoken connection perfectly.

Horses and Dakota Fanning are an irrresistable combination of cuteness, but that does not excuse Dreamer for being a too-typical sports movie. The film is far too simple in its storytelling and more interested in pulling tears from the audiences eyes than compelling those emotions with better storytelling.

Problems aside, the film works because Dakota Fanning is so appealing and entertaining. Fanning's performance alone is worth the price of admission.

Saccharine and a bit predictable Dreamer runs ahead of the pack of family sports movies because young Dakota Fanning is a real star. She has that intangible 'it' quality that makes you want to watch her and root for her. It's a quality that many child actors have had before but few have sustained it past puberty. Dakota Fanning still has a few years before the first tests of growing up a movie star begin. Until then it's okay to revel in slight sweet performances like the one in Dreamer.

Movie Review: Are We There Yet?

Are We There Yet? (2005) 

Directed by Brian Levant

Written by David N. Weiss

Starring Ice Cube, Nia Long, Jay Mohr, Tracy Morgan

Release Date January 21st, 2005 

Published January 20th, 2005

Is Ice Cube attempting to shed his gangsta image in favor of being Martin Lawrence's understudy? It's a fair question when you see him choosing scripts like the one for Are We There Yet, clearly a role that  Martin Lawrence or even Cedric The Entertainer managed to turn down. Are We There Yet is brutally awful. An absolute utter mess of mean spirited physical humor and demonic child characters with a tacked on sappy and sentimental ending.

Honestly, this movie couldn't be worse if it had been inspired by a video game and directed by Uwe Boll.

Nick (Ice Cube) hates children. So bad luck for him when he falls in love at first sight with Suzanne (Nia Long), the mother of two small children. Nick's luck is worse than he knows because even before meeting him the two kids, Lindsey (Aleisha Allen) and Kevin (Philip Bolden), have it in for him. For Lindsey and Kevin no man is good enough for their mom, except their dad who has left the family.

Despite his hatred of children Nick really wants to get some, so of course when Suzanne needs someone to ferry her kids from her home in Oregon to Vancouver, Canada where she has to work on New Years Eve, Nick is the first to volunteer. At first they were supposed to fly in, but the kids set him up for Homeland security, putting the kibosh on the plane flight.

They try a train but once again the kids have it in for him. So they are left to drive in Nick's brand new Lincoln Navigator. No points for guessing what happens to this gorgeous vehicle thanks to these two evil children. Poor Nick is then subjected to every form of hack screen writer kind of human torture, from the classic kick in the groin to every form of gross-out humor imaginable.

The film attempts to establish a broad comic tone that might justify it's flights of gross-out humor and over the top elements like Nick's talking bobble head. However the film loses that attempt by tacking on scenes of import such as when the kids are forced to confront their no good father and find out he's never coming back. Such a weighty subject has no place in a film in which a child peeing on an innocent woman is a big comic moment.

And the film manages to get worse. For some reason beyond the comprehension of any right thinking movie watcher, Nick has a Satchell Page bobble head doll. If that is not indignity enough for the legendary Mr. Page, the doll talks to Nick in the voice of former SNL star Tracy Morgan. Why the four screen writers , who shall remain nameless, and hack Director Brian Levant, the auteur behind classics like Jingle All The Way and Snow Dogs, chose to denigrate Mr. Page in this way is anyone's guess. But why does Nick talk to the bobble head and it talk back, is the character supposed to be insane?

How does Director Brian Levant keep getting work? His films have managed to get worse every time he makes one. Jingle All The Way, Snow Dogs and now Are We There Yet are a triumvirate of films that on one resume should mean automatic dismissal. Instead he's already at work on another project. God help us if there is another bobble head or child in the vicinity.