You knew this would happen someday. Some producer in Hollywood would figure out how to merge the pointless sequel and the pointless remake into one big mess. The end result is
Are We Done Yet. Although the film is being advertised as the sequel to the surprise hit 2005 family film
Are We There Yet, it actually started life as an updated remake of the 1948 Cary Grant comedy
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. They basically took the script they already had, and then crammed in the characters from another movie. The lack of imagination that went on behind the scenes is there on display should you purchase a ticket. The film is as bland and timid as a PG-rated family comedy can get, but at least it's not quite as insultingly stupid or offensive as the original film.
As we rejoin gruff family man Nick Persons (Ice Cube), he has recently married his sweetheart from the first film, Suzanne (Nia Long), and is now living with her in his cramped and tiny apartment with her two bratty children from a past failed marriage - Lindsey (Aleisha Allen) and Kevin (Philip Bolden). Nick's apartment seems like it was designed for a
Three Stooges comedy short, considering how everything keeps on falling out and there's hardly any room to walk without hitting your head against something. When Suzanne announces that she is pregnant with twins, Nick realizes they are going to need a bigger place to live. They head out to the country to look at a large old house that could easily fit the needs of their growing family, but is in desperate need of repair. They purchase the house, and as the rebuilding begins, Nick finds himself at the mercy of shady contractors, faulty wiring, deranged wildlife, and a friendly yet obnoxious man named Chuck (John G. McGinley from TV's
Scrubs) who not only tries to help the Persons with their repair job, but seems to hold just about every job in the town they moved into. Not only is Chuck the Real Estate agent who initially sells them the house, but he's also the housing contractor, building inspector, midwife, couple therapist, and former basketball player for the L.A. Lakers.
There are some subplots here and there, such as 13-year old Lindsey wanting to date, and Nick trying to adjust to married life after years of being a swinging bachelor. These are treated as filler for screenwriter Hank Nelken (
Saving Silverman) to pad out his script, and move us from one elaborate slapstick sequence to the next. Most of
Are We Done Yet plays as a series of outtakes from the 1980s Tom Hanks comedy,
The Money Pit, that were left on the cutting room floor. The film wastes no opportunity to electrocute, smash, crush, or drop Nick from a height that would probably kill a lesser man. Why the Person family stay in a house that is an obvious death trap is known only to them, but by the third time poor Nick had something dropped on him, I was starting to think that he was a masochist. When the house isn't trying to kill him, all of God's little creatures pick up the slack. During the course of the film, Nick has run-ins with raccoons, bats, owls, deer, and one very large fish. These sequences are about what you would expect, except for the raccoon sequence, as Nick supposedly chooses to get on the bad side of that rare woodland animal that has mastered the art of trash talk. When the poor sap takes a nasty fall from the roof trying to corner the critter, the raccoon looks down on him, and actually insults him in a high pitched cartoon voice. I would normally be surprised, but then I remembered that Nick spent most of the original movie having conversations with a talking bobblehead doll, so maybe it's not so surprising after all.
The signs that this was a slapped together sequel are visible all over, as there's actually very little continuity between the last film and this. In the last movie, Suzanne and her two kids lived in a large two-story house with their sex-crazed grandmother. Why they are living in Nick's tiny apartment at the beginning of the film, I have no idea. Also in the last film, Suzanne was a successful career woman. Here, she seems to have given up her job entirely so that she can spend the entire movie looking worried as her husband is comically abused. This is obviously the result of the screenplay originally not being written as a sequel, and the characters from another movie were crudely shoved into the story with all the subtlety of a jackhammer, continuity be damned. The characters barely seem to fit into the film's story in the first place. Suzanne and her kids are restricted to almost non-existent cameos, with most of the scenes dealing with Nick and his mounting frustration with town Everyman Chuck. The surrounding characters barely register, and mainly are there simply for cheap laughs, some of which teeter dangerously close to being offensive. (I understand in a comedy like this that it's typical to have hired help repairing the house be stupid, but isn't it going a bit far to have the house repair staff be stupid AND blind?) There's not a single character or moment that is remotely near genuine, nor are the people who inhabit the story allowed to display any emotion other than comic exasperation.
Director Steve Carr (
Rebound,
Dr. Dolittle 2) was obviously not working with a great script to start with, but a few fleeting bright spots shine through. The film is definitely more family-friendly than the last one, which seemed to be trying to push the boundaries of a PG-rating. We do get a quick close up of a construction worker's exposed butt crack, but compared to the infamous sequence in the original film where a young boy urinated on a woman's face and open mouth, this is mild. Ice Cube's performance is nothing that I will make professional comic actors envious, but you have to admire the guy for going at the role full-tilt. He's energetic, and he's obviously giving it his all. In the lead supporting role, John C. McGinley is intentionally obnoxious, yet in a goofy and likeable way, as the multi-tasking Chuck who seems to be trying to make the most out of his life by holding every job under the sun. He's an interesting idea for a comic character, and I wish the screenplay could have done more with him. It is perhaps for the best that the Person kids, Lindsey and Kevin, are stuck with minor roles. Every time they came on the screen, I wanted Nick to just smack them upside the head. I don't think that's the feeling the movie wanted to bring across to it's audience, especially not when Nick starts bonding with little Kevin late in the film. One of the subplots centers around young Lindsey wanting to be treated like an adult, but when you consider that most of her scenes have her acting like an obnoxious and spoiled 10-year-old, it's hard to sympathize.
There's really nothing to surprise or amuse in
Are We Done Yet. The screenplay goes from one slapstick sequence after another, and the characters are there simply to set them into motion or react to them. A smarter script could have figured out ways to have the slapstick build from the plot, instead of having the people willingly walk right into them. As much as the film asks us to rally behind Nick, I just couldn't because he keeps on making the same stupid mistakes over and over. The film makes the fatal flaw of having him being a fairly reasonable guy who is forced to act stupid for no reason. At least in the classic
Three Stooges shorts, the guys were stupid to begin with. Nick is the victim of a screenplay that didn't have a lot of thought put into it.
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You knew this would happen someday. Some producer in Hollywood would figure out how to merge the pointless sequel and the pointless remake into one big mess. The end result is Are We Done Yet. Although the film is being advertised as the sequel to the surprise hit 2005 family film Are We There Yet, it actually started life as an updated remake of the 1948 Cary Grant comedy Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. They basically took the script they already had, and then crammed in the characters from another movie. The lack of imagination that went on behind the scenes is there on display should you purchase a ticket. The film is as bland and timid as a PG-rated family comedy can get, but at least it's not quite as insultingly stupid or offensive as the original film.
As we rejoin gruff family man Nick Persons (Ice Cube), he has recently married his sweetheart from the first film, Suzanne (Nia Long), and is now living with her in his cramped and tiny apartment with her two bratty children from a past failed marriage - Lindsey (Aleisha Allen) and Kevin (Philip Bolden). Nick's apartment seems like it was designed for a Three Stooges comedy short, considering how everything keeps on falling out and there's hardly any room to walk without hitting your head against something. When Suzanne announces that she is pregnant with twins, Nick realizes they are going to need a bigger place to live. They head out to the country to look at a large old house that could easily fit the needs of their growing family, but is in desperate need of repair. They purchase the house, and as the rebuilding begins, Nick finds himself at the mercy of shady contractors, faulty wiring, deranged wildlife, and a friendly yet obnoxious man named Chuck (John G. McGinley from TV's Scrubs) who not only tries to help the Persons with their repair job, but seems to hold just about every job in the town they moved into. Not only is Chuck the Real Estate agent who initially sells them the house, but he's also the housing contractor, building inspector, midwife, couple therapist, and former basketball player for the L.A. Lakers.
There are some subplots here and there, such as 13-year old Lindsey wanting to date, and Nick trying to adjust to married life after years of being a swinging bachelor. These are treated as filler for screenwriter Hank Nelken (Saving Silverman) to pad out his script, and move us from one elaborate slapstick sequence to the next. Most of Are We Done Yet plays as a series of outtakes from the 1980s Tom Hanks comedy, The Money Pit, that were left on the cutting room floor. The film wastes no opportunity to electrocute, smash, crush, or drop Nick from a height that would probably kill a lesser man. Why the Person family stay in a house that is an obvious death trap is known only to them, but by the third time poor Nick had something dropped on him, I was starting to think that he was a masochist. When the house isn't trying to kill him, all of God's little creatures pick up the slack. During the course of the film, Nick has run-ins with raccoons, bats, owls, deer, and one very large fish. These sequences are about what you would expect, except for the raccoon sequence, as Nick supposedly chooses to get on the bad side of that rare woodland animal that has mastered the art of trash talk. When the poor sap takes a nasty fall from the roof trying to corner the critter, the raccoon looks down on him, and actually insults him in a high pitched cartoon voice. I would normally be surprised, but then I remembered that Nick spent most of the original movie having conversations with a talking bobblehead doll, so maybe it's not so surprising after all.
The signs that this was a slapped together sequel are visible all over, as there's actually very little continuity between the last film and this. In the last movie, Suzanne and her two kids lived in a large two-story house with their sex-crazed grandmother. Why they are living in Nick's tiny apartment at the beginning of the film, I have no idea. Also in the last film, Suzanne was a successful career woman. Here, she seems to have given up her job entirely so that she can spend the entire movie looking worried as her husband is comically abused. This is obviously the result of the screenplay originally not being written as a sequel, and the characters from another movie were crudely shoved into the story with all the subtlety of a jackhammer, continuity be damned. The characters barely seem to fit into the film's story in the first place. Suzanne and her kids are restricted to almost non-existent cameos, with most of the scenes dealing with Nick and his mounting frustration with town Everyman Chuck. The surrounding characters barely register, and mainly are there simply for cheap laughs, some of which teeter dangerously close to being offensive. (I understand in a comedy like this that it's typical to have hired help repairing the house be stupid, but isn't it going a bit far to have the house repair staff be stupid AND blind?) There's not a single character or moment that is remotely near genuine, nor are the people who inhabit the story allowed to display any emotion other than comic exasperation.
Director Steve Carr (Rebound, Dr. Dolittle 2) was obviously not working with a great script to start with, but a few fleeting bright spots shine through. The film is definitely more family-friendly than the last one, which seemed to be trying to push the boundaries of a PG-rating. We do get a quick close up of a construction worker's exposed butt crack, but compared to the infamous sequence in the original film where a young boy urinated on a woman's face and open mouth, this is mild. Ice Cube's performance is nothing that I will make professional comic actors envious, but you have to admire the guy for going at the role full-tilt. He's energetic, and he's obviously giving it his all. In the lead supporting role, John C. McGinley is intentionally obnoxious, yet in a goofy and likeable way, as the multi-tasking Chuck who seems to be trying to make the most out of his life by holding every job under the sun. He's an interesting idea for a comic character, and I wish the screenplay could have done more with him. It is perhaps for the best that the Person kids, Lindsey and Kevin, are stuck with minor roles. Every time they came on the screen, I wanted Nick to just smack them upside the head. I don't think that's the feeling the movie wanted to bring across to it's audience, especially not when Nick starts bonding with little Kevin late in the film. One of the subplots centers around young Lindsey wanting to be treated like an adult, but when you consider that most of her scenes have her acting like an obnoxious and spoiled 10-year-old, it's hard to sympathize.
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