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Are We There Yet?
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For
a change, the trailer for Are We There
Yet? promises exactly what the film delivers.
It
is a very physical comedy in which Nick (Ice Cube), in order to impress the
lovely Suzanne (Nia Long), offers to transport her two kids, Lindsey (Aleisha
Allen from School of Rock, 2003) and
Kevin (Philip Bolden), across country.
But
these kids are dead-set against their Mom getting a new husband, so they ensure
that Nick’s journey is hell. Burning through various, quickly discarded modes
of travel – train, horse, foot – the film reserves its greatest catastrophes
for the love of Nick’s life: his flashy new Lincoln Navigator.
Ice
Cube, previously well known as a singer, is one of those actor-producers who,
in his own quiet way, has risen almost to the status of a shadow auteur in the
mainstream American film industry. His sensibility drives the Friday and Barbershop series of films, with their digressive, amiable humour and gently satirical
observation of socio-cultural trends.
Are We There Yet? is a
slightly different affair. Most of its characters are black, and much of its
comedy depends on standard stereotypes of African-American behaviour – such as
Nick’s overweening pride over the “material object” of his car.
But
this movie is shooting for the white market too, so the more specialised
cultural and political references that litter a film like Barbershop are here traded for safe homages to Aretha Franklin and
the legendary baseball star Satchel Paige (voiced by comedian Tracy Morgan).
Director
Brian Levant has juggled this combo of kids, sentiment and burlesque mayhem
before in Problem
Child 2 (1991). After guiding Cuba Gooding Jr in the enjoyable Snow Dogs (2002), he also seems to have been pegged as the guy who can best blend
elements of America’s often segregated black and white cultures in the one
movie. Hence the rather superfluous presence of Nick’s would-be bro and
all-round adviser, Marty (Jay Mohr), plus a host of white guys who at first
seem threatening but end up benign.
This
is a simple movie that swiftly avoids the complications of really thinking
through what extended families are in the modern world (the demonising of the
kids’ biological father is rather expedient), and which engineers the moral
transformation of its hero without too much fuss.
There
is also a very strange Takeshi Kitano-like bit of business concern the
apparition of the new family: a rather simplistic version of the
extended-family question, reduced to the sheer irresponsibility of the errant
African-American male.
But,
for most of its ride, Are We There Yet? is highly enjoyable fare.
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