THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1995 Michael John Legeros
(Paramount)
Directed by Betty Thomas
Written by Laurice Elehwany & Rick Copp and
Bonnie Turner & Terry Turner
Cast Shelley Long, Gary Cole, Michael McKean
MPAA Rating "PG-13"
Running Time 90 minutes
Reviewed at General Cinemas, Raleigh, NC (17FEB95)
==
"Jan, cut the crap."
- Grandma Brady
THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE is less a motion picture than a minor pop event. Forget your reruns and forget your Nick at Nite; this dead-on recreation of the fabled seventies sitcom is both so exhilarating *and* so disturbing that you half-expect to see the ghost of Rod Serling appear in the narrative.
Did we really act this way twenty years ago? Of course not. The genius of THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE is how it heightens the surreality of the Family Unit From Hell by fast-forwarding them into the future. It's 1995 and Greg still calls the chicks "groovy," and Marsha still considers hair-brushing the high point of her day. Bell bottoms are in, and Alice has yet to move out.
Nothing has changed within the garish walls of Brady Manor and, so, the plot has the family stepping out into the real world, where they are confronted by everything from carjackers to lesbians. Granted, nothing *too* serious happens here. With the exception of some heavy sexual innuendo, THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE is about as sanitary as the source material. And that's too bad.
Director Betty Thomas (of TV's "Hill Street Blues" fame) doesn't cut between real-life and Brady-life enough to make the contrast as glaring as it should be. The edge isn't sharp enough. *We* know that what we're watching is funky, though, so it's not that much of a problem.
Nor are the glaring low production standards.
The cast is uniformly appealing. Shelly Long seems to have found her niche under awful hair, while Gary Cole is right on the mark with Dad's sing-song truisms. Christine Taylor is the best of the Brady kids. She's a cheery delight as Marsha *and* is a dead ringer for Maureen McCormick. Her foil is Jennifer Elise Cox, who is a howl as the brooding Jan.
By the way, my crush was always on Eve Plumb.
BOTTOM LINE: Excruciatingly dopey, which is exactly why we watched it
in the first place.
Grade: B+
-- Michael J. Legeros Raleigh, North Carolina
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