Ice Cube fizzles in 'Are We There Yet?'

By Tom Long
The Detroit News

ARE WE THERE YET? (PG) One Star (Poor) A man trying to woo a woman agrees to drive her bratty kids from Oregon to Toronto in this horrible, potty-driven humorless film. Ice Cube, Nia Long star for director Brian Levant. Columbia Pictures. 89 minutes.

Yes, that may seem like a fairly obvious criticism of "Are We There Yet?" but then it's also completely accurate. This terminally dumb and thoroughly crude kids flick is going to seem excruciating to most adults. It's one of those movies where you'd be glad to pay another eight bucks to leave the theater.

Unfortunately, most adults in attendance will have kids with them. The kids aren't going to want to leave. Kids love pee-pee jokes. "Are We There Yet?" is big on pee-pee jokes. It also has puke jokes, ca-ca jokes, mud jokes, people sliding on ice and cars being thoroughly trashed inside and out. Kid heaven, parent hell.

What Ice Cube is doing in this movie is anybody's guess; but it's obviously his own fault since it comes from his production company. It's probably part of his gangsta-rappers-can-be-lovable-too career plan, but in the wake of his successful and surprisingly thoughtful "Barbershop" films, this looks exactly like the sticky little piece of glop it is.

Cube plays player Nick Persons, owner of a sports memorabilia shop in Portland, Oregon. He looks out his window one day and spies beautiful Suzanne Kingston (Nia Long) and decides he's in love. Only problem is the divorced Suzanne has two bratty young kids — daughter Lindsey (Aleisha Allen) and younger son Kevin (Philip Bolden) — who are hoping Mom will reconcile with Dad. So they go out of their way to drive off any man fool enough to court Suzanne.

Which makes Nick a prime target when he says he'll get the kids up to Vancouver where Mom's working one weekend. First he tries a plane, then a train, but the kids foil his best attempts to send them off, so he has to drive them north in his brand new, tricked-out car. Which means a prank-filled road trip for Nick and lots of cheap shots for the kids.

And that's pretty much the whole movie: The kids dump all over Nick every chance they get, and even when they do eventually warm up to him, things keep going wrong.

All the wrong, of course, is what kids will find right about this movie. It's one of those exercises in adult humiliation in which children do ever more outrageous and socially irresponsible things without any serious consequences. They hop a train, hijack a car, assault people physically, trigger airline security, destroy property, waste thousands of dollars and never suffer any consequences.

All this and the movie is rated PG. Which is worse, America: Showing a moment of nudity or teaching kids that carjacking is funny?

Beyond that, these kids are seriously bratty. So bratty that when the script finally tries to lighten things up and explain away their behavior — it's all because they have no father figure — it's too little too late.

Then again, most adults may feel like it's too late less than 10 minutes into this movie. Here's the scary thing: The first time you ask yourself, "Is it over yet?" it's not even close.

Rated PG-13 for language and crude humor.