Are We Done Yet?

Published 7:00 am Tuesday, April 3, 2007

One year (in movie time) on from the action of 2005’s Are We There Yet?, sports memorabilia salesman Nick Persons (Ice Cube) has sold his business, launched a magazine, and moved his newlywed bride (Nia Long) and two pouty, foul-tempered stepkids into his cramped Portland apartment. Whereupon, the unexpected arrival of a bun in the oven prompts a relocation to the bucolic countryside and a too-good-to-be-true fixer-upper that quickly proves to be exactly that. Fans of the first film can rest assured that a change in the director’s chair—Dr. Doolittle 2 auteur Steve Carr taking over for the presumably indisposed Brian Levant—has done little to curb the overall tone of slapstick desperation, as the game-faced Mr. Cube does battle with the forces of nature, power tools, and a raft of risible ethnic caricatures. Reportedly, this is all a remake of the popular 1948 Cary Grant comedy, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, though I’ll be damned if I can remember the scene where Grant chased a CGI raccoon across his roof and crashed through to the porch below only to look up and see the little bugger waving back at him, tittering, “Ha ha, sucker!”