January 20, 2005 - Are We There Yet? is a little less than half of a good movie, which I suppose is about the most you can ask for during January's cinematic dumping ground. It's both a romantic fable and a hell movie for wannabe players – each in all the wrong measures – but in a better world, it could have been a smartly-drawn commentary on single parenting. But directed by Brian Levant, the filmmaker (using that word loosely) responsible for Snow Dogs and Jingle All the Way, it's a broad comedy about a nice guy and two hellish children who put him through the tortures of the damned. And I guess that's why the film feels more, and on infrequent occasions less, like the disappointment most audiences will expect from this kind of formulaic family fluff.

Ice Cube, who has been breezily successful in winter months past with the likes of Torque and Barbershop 2, plays Nick Persons, a perennial bachelor who gives up his lothario's life after meeting Suzanne (Nia Long), a divorcee with two pre-teen terrors named Kevin (Philip Daniel Bolden) and Lindsay (Aleisha Allen). Despite his earnest attempts to woo the single mom, Nick finds himself stuck, as his pal Marty (Jay Mohr) puts it, in the "friend zone," but a unique opportunity presents itself when Suzanne's ex-husband bails out at the last minute of a New Year's Eve business trip: he offers to take the kids to Vancouver, thereby saving Suzanne's job and with any luck landing him a little well-deserved nookie.

What Nick doesn't yet realize is that Kevin and Lindsay have made a pact to keep their mother away from prospective suitors – at any cost – and even stuck in the "friend zone," Nick is a threat to their furtive hope that Mommy and Daddy will one day reunite. Before long, their flight / train ride / road trip becomes a battle of wills between this onetime player and what he sees as the only two obstacles between himself and the perfect woman.

Boyz n the Hood played on TV often in the past few months, and it's an unsettling reminder what a promising actor Ice Cube once was: ferocious, unpolished, but surprisingly tender, his turn as Doughboy proved to be the scarred heart of John Singleton's directorial debut. Since then, however, his career makeovers (as a comedian, action hero, and finally, off screen as a producer) have met with inconsistent success, but downplaying the randy edges of his comic turn in the Friday series work better than they deserve, even in conventional crap like this. For once, that constipated look of his actually has a purpose – how would you feel if a couple of bratty kids outsmarted you at every turn? – and reveals that his tough-guy persona may hide the heart of a family man.

That said, however, the children in the film are unforgivably undisciplined, and in desperate need of an old-fashioned switch to the behind; all of which is why much of the film is practically unwatchable to a person over the age of seven. In the first scene of the movie, Kevin and Lindsay attack their mom's date with a barrage of guck-filled balloons, leaving a crater of Elmer's glue that should have earned them the grounding of a lifetime. Instead, their sabotage is never mentioned again, and Suzanne never gives the slightest reprimand to either of these unholy spawn.

-Sony Ice Cube in Are We There Yet?

Of course, in movies like this, the kids miraculously come off like angels while adults are inhuman monsters for even considering suitable disciplinary measures, but the larger problem the film never addresses is just how ignorant a parent Suzanne must really be. After all, she claims to be completely devoted to them, but hardly seems to spend any time with them at all (during any of which she might mention that Daddy ain't coming back), and in predictable plot-furthering mode, attacks Nick when he's late delivering her kids (never mind the fact he volunteers to help so she won't lose her job).

Director Levant, meanwhile, seems to think that subtlety in family entertainment amounts to only implying a swift kick to the crotch rather than actually showing it, and assaults the audience with a never-ending stream of sight gags; the end result is a film that never settles on a comfortable tone, and fails to support its sporadic moments of actual tenderness. I actually bought that Nick began to care for the kids by the time he gets mauled by airport security, dives headfirst into concrete, fights a deer, rides a horse off a bridge, and watches his prized Navigator catch on fire; but the film's top-heavy glut of physical goofs makes the moment impossible to enjoy.

There are nonetheless a number of genuine laughs to be had – Kevin finding Nick's keys just seconds after the car catches fire, Tracy Morgan's purposeless running commentary as a bobble-head Satchel Paige, and pretty much any instance of Ice Cube terrorizing the kids – though I anticipate few among Cube's regular audience will follow him into Are We There Yet?'s kid-friendly territory. But whether you're a part of Cube's posse or a poor, unfortunate soul who wandered in from the lobby not knowing what you're in for, I expect you'll be asking a different question once the movie gets underway: is this thing over yet?

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