By Robert Sims
Story
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A man rushes into buying the perfect house in the suburbs so he can raise his family. Only he soon discovers he’s overpaid for a death trap that will require big bucks to renovate. Yes,
Are We Done Yet? is another remake of
Cary Grant’s 1948 classic comedy,
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. While the prospect of
Ice Cube stuck in a house of horrors seems like an appropriate way to trump the road trip from hell that was
Are We There Yet?, this sequel isn’t an upgrade on Tom Hanks’ 1986
Blandings redo,
The Money Pit. But that won’t matter to the kids who laughed at the slow and painful destruction of
Ice Cube’s beloved SUV. Now they’ll squeal with delight as
Ice Cube—finally married to Nia Long, who’s pregnant with his twin babies—tries to replace the leaky roof he’s put over the heads of his ungrateful stepchildren (Aleisha Allen and Philip Bolden). “I can fix that,”
Ice Cube says after breaking something. Too bad no one took a crack at fixing a script that fails to puts a modern-day spin on the suburban angst Cary Grant endured 60 years ago.
Acting
As a founding member of 1980s gangsta rap group N.W.A.,
Ice Cube made his bones scaring the living daylight out of white middle-class Americans. Now he’s entertaining their grandkids with innocuous family-friendly farces that once were
Eddie Murphy’s bread and butter. You can’t blame
Ice Cube for building upon his comedy franchises
Barbershop and
Friday, especially as he’s failed in his bid to be an action hero. But unlike
The Pacifier, which
Vin Diesel employed to poke fun at his tough-guy image, this kid-conscious franchise makes
Ice Cube look softer than a life-size teddy bear. Sure, he’s man enough to more of a beating than he did the first time out as Nick Persons, but the scowling
Ice Cube looks as uncomfortable bearing the brunt of these
Home Alone-style humiliations as he does working with children and animals. Not so with
John C. McGinley, the film’s lone source of amusement. He seems thrilled to be out of his doctor
Scrubs and hamming it up as a happy-go-lucky man of many hats, including realtor, construction manager and midwife. Speaking of giving birth,
Nia Long doesn’t have anything to do other than to exude the glow of an expectant mother. Unfortunately, Long’s onscreen kids,
Aleisha Allen and
Philip Bolden, don’t have much to do either. They were the driving force behind
Ice Cube’s road rage in
Are We There Yet? Now they barely get up to any mischief. And the better behaved they are, the less enjoyable
Are We Done Yet? is.
Direction
Are We Done Yet? began life as a
Blandings remake before
Ice Cube et al. retooled it as this plain and predictable sequel. So that may explain why
Allen and
Bolden are no longer the cause of
Ice Cube’s physical abuse. That’s a shame, as the antagonistic relationship they once shared made
Are We There Yet? somewhat tolerable. Director
Steve Carr clearly has no interest in exploring
Ice Cube’s new role as a stepfather, not even if it results in more concussions. Then again,
Carr’s there to merely serve as a one-man wrecking crew. He dutifully tears down
Ice Cube’s house, but he doesn’t do it with much panache or originality. You just know
Ice Cube will hit rock bottom when he tries to fall asleep while rain pours through his roofless house. At least
Carr—who also directed such mediocre sequels as
Dr. Dolittle 2 and
Ice Cube’s
Next Friday—has the good sense not to bring back the
Tracy Morgan-voiced Satchel Paige bobblehead doll from
Are We There Yet? And he does wrap up the proceedings with a welcome nod to the chaos
Ice Cube endured on that long drive. Still, by the time
Ice Cube steps foot in the dream house he’s built, you’re hoping that the trials and tribulations of his battered and bruised Nick Persons are indeed over and done with.