A VERY BRADY SEQUEL
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Shelley Long, Gary Cole, Tim Matheson, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Christine Taylor, Jennifer Elise Cox, Paul Sutera, Jesse Lee, Olivia Hack. Screenplay: Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan, James Berg, Stan Zimmerman. Director: Arlene Sanford. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Seventy-nine weeks -- count them, seventy-nine -- is all that separates the release of A VERY BRADY SEQUEL from THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE, in what has to rank as one of the fastest sequel turnarounds in film history. Even taking into account the fact that the Brady house sets and Alice's uniform were already available, that's a tidy 18 months for writing the script, pre-production, shooting and post-production. You might expect a rather perfunctory piece of film-making given those circumstances, and you would find it. A VERY BRADY SEQUEL has some cute moments, but it is lacking the sense of direction which made THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE such a guilty pleasure.
The sequel finds all the BRADY cast members (except for David Graf as Sam the butcher) exactly where we left them at the end of the last movie, happily stuck in the 1970s while the world around them spins a quarter century faster. All seems typically groovy for Mike (Gary Cole), Carol (Shelley Long) and the clan until they receive a visit from a man who says he is Roy Martin (Tim Matheson)...Carol's first husband, a globe-trotting archaeologist lost and presumed dead many years earlier. This throws the household into turmoil. Carol and Mike are confused over how to deal with this news, Greg (Christopher Daniel Barnes) and Marcia (Christine Taylor) are confused over feelings about each other, and Jan (Jennifer Elise Cox)...well, as usual, she's just confused. But all of them should be more concerned about Roy, who primarily seems concerned about the whereabouts of a horse statue which could be worth a fortune.
THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE arrived in the middle of a slew of T.V.-to-film re-treads, so it was easy to overlook the fact that there was actually a point to it besides gratuitous nostalgia. Even as the film made referrence to "classic" Brady plots, it also provided the wonderful conceit of sealing the Bradys in a bubble of obliviousness while time had marched on for everyone else, and it made for a genuinely entertaining remembrance of a simpler time with simpler problems. A VERY BRADY SEQUEL misses the boat on both counts. There isn't nearly enough juxtaposition between the Bradys and the modern world; most of the film seems to take place in the Brady house, with only a sarcastic Matheson to react. There is one funny bit in which Mike speaks to a police detective ("Homicide's" Richard Belzer) in a police station where everything around him is filmed in the unsteady hand-held style of modern crime dramas, while Mike himself is an island of stable serenity. Too often, however, the Bradys end up interacting just with each other, repeating 70s catch phrases and mimicking their television counterparts.
As for the echoes of the original series, the most memorable were already used in the first film. We do get a detailed re-creation of Jan's imaginary boyfriend George Glass, and token references to other episodes like the Hawaiian vacation shows (don't be fooled by ads which make it look like the entire film is set in Hawaii; the Bradys don't hit the islands until about twenty minutes remain), but A VERY BRADY SEQUEL doesn't provide the same warmth of familiarity. Instead, it spends a lot of time playing with sexual tension between Greg and Marcia as the realization that they aren't _really_ related puts interesting ideas in their heads. There are a few solid laughs in that sub-plot, but unfortunately it underlines an over-reliance on sexual double-entendre of a staggering obviousness. I suppose a limited time frame to work on a script can make you leap for the easy gag.
Still, A VERY BRADY SEQUEL does have the same superb cast to draw on, and they make for a film which seems more creative than it actually is. Jennifer Elise Cox again has the showcase role of neglected middle child Jan, and dumping her psychotic "inner voice" makes her desperation for attention a bit more fun. Gary Cole is also priceless -- it's hard to imagine a more convincingly earnest square, or someone else delivering a line like, "So what are your plans now that you're alive?" as though it almost made sense. A VERY BRADY SEQUEL is occasionally cute, directed competently by Arlene Sanford, but it's rarely clever. Someone had an idea in mind when they made the first film, and that's true of the sequel as well. It's just that the idea this time was closer to, "Let's get this thing out there while the kids still look like kids."
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 retro actions: 5.
Scott Renshaw Stanford University http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw
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