Are We There Yet?

(38%) A borderline acceptable family comedy that follows a small business owner "ice cube", a man who must deal drugs or something on the side because he never wears the same clothes twice, and his big ugly car is covered in more jewellery than than Mr T, but because this is a kids film that aspect of his life is never looked into. And I can only guess that he samples some of his product as he hallucinates quite badly from time to time with a nodding toy bursting into life, but yet again, we never see him shoot up. The plot is tried and tested, "Planes, trains and automobiles" type of thing, and everything goes along at a decent pace, just don't expect any of cube's explicit raps on the soundtrack, or to laugh too much, and this might just pass the time better than expected.

This may not be an Academy Award winning movie, but it was entertaining the whole way through. It was light hearted, funny (with some slap-stick and occasional rude humor) and moving at times. I thought it was cleaver how Nick's conscience was portrayed through a Satchel Paige bobble-head. This movie appealed to all ages. There were some surprise guest appearances, namely Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura from Star Trek) and Tracy Morgan as the voice of Satchel Paige. This movie was similar in style to Christmas With The Kranks only this one was actually funny and you care about the characters. If you are looking to be entertained and fun for the whole family ...then this movie is for you.

Nick Persons (Ice Cube) owns a sports memorabilia shop in Portland, Oregon. He has also taken delivery of a customised Lincoln Navigator. Nick is a player who likes beautiful women but hates kids.

When Nick meets the Suzanne (Nia Long) a business executive separated from her husband. He has to deal with her two young kids who wreck any new relationship their mother gets involved in hoping she will get back with their father.

When business commitments leaves Suzanne stranded in Vancouver. Nick Volunteers to bring the children to her. However after lots of shenanigans, Nick has to drive them to Vancouver.

Are We There Yet? is a mildly amusing film with Home Alone lite slapstick. The kids are annoying as hell, no wonder their dad shacked up with a new family of his own.

It is a shame the director never realised how awful the kids were with their pranks. It makes the film look mean spirited.

The more I study film ideas, the more I'm amazed at how some ideas continue to live.

Take the notion of humorous cruelty. Were the Stooges the first to build a franchise around this? In modern times, it is the "Home Alone" franchise where we are given an excuse for accepting the cruelties because the hurter is a clever but innocent child and the hurtees are stereotypical bad guys.

Here the idea tries a new incarnation. Lest there be any mistake about the source, the movie actually starts in the "old" Home Alone mode with our (anonymous) victim encountering tripwires that trigger child-made traps of household goods and toys.

Then it shifts into the new mode. In this edition, some of the tricks are intended and some are not. The victim is a new kind of shiftless: a black man actually trying to be "ghetto." The story is supposed to smoothly morph in a sort of "What About Bob" way from pain to rewarding relationship. The turning point is also stereotypical: the treasured black dad has abandoned his family and the beleaguered suitor is revealed to be someone to whom that also happened.

I think humor about race, especially racial stereotypes, is fair game. How better to puncture racism? But its got to be funny doesn't it?

This picture turns out to be what it starts to be about: a way of torturing a black dude who manages a slick appearance of the ghetto (we're talking about the guy who calls himself Ice Cube here, not his character) and tries to put himself where he doesn't belong. Poignant maybe, but neither funny nor endearing.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Are We There Yet? pits Ice Cube as a bumbling dad of sorts who deals with mischievous kids - it's like a modern "Home Alone" but without criminals, and also the fact that it's bad. In this case, the hard type formula in charge of naughty children ("The Pacifier", "Daddy Day Care") is used again. If before the protagonists were Vin Diesel or Arnold Schwarzenegger, now the tough man is Ice Cube, the rapper of rough letters that now declares "I wanna be like Eddie Murphy."

If already the starting point is not very promising, in the hands of Brian Levant ("Problem Child 2", "The Flintstones", "Beethoven, etc.), vulgarity arrives To unbearable extremes. It's a series of repetitive grown men falling down scenes and all sorts of bland old hi-jinks. Ice Cube is dating a woman with two mischievous kids, as she asks him to drive them to Vancouver in Canada to see her at a business trip. Ice Cube must deal with the kids treating him as "the enemy", pulling slapstick pranks here and there, forgiving them in the end, and making the once controversial rapper succumb to family films. AWTY? is repetitive and weak.

Family films of the 2000s are particularly bad, although AWTY? is at least entertaining. Seeing this movie can be worse if we do not transmute our mind to that of a 7 year old. Funny, but unprecedented. I, in the case of the protagonist, had committed a murder. But I have nothing to worry about is pure fantasy.