The Brady Bunch Movie (1995)

Directed by Betty Thomas. Starring Shelley Long, Gary Cole, Christine Taylor, Jennifer Elise Cox, Michael McKean, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Olivia Hack, Henriette Mantel, Paul Sutera, Jean Smart, Jesse Lee Soffer, Alanna Ubach, David Graf, Shane Conrad, Marissa Ribisi. [PG-13]

This part-homage/part-parody of the ultra-unfashionable 70s sitcom transplants the square Brady clan to a sequestered patch of modern day suburbia (oh, boy, won’t these sunny dips fit right in with the cynical and ironic world of the 90s…). Thin narrative impetus relates to the family needing to raise $20,000 to save their house; myriad sub-plots—most of them throwaways—are as tacky as the ones from the show (some are even copied-and-pasted). About as successful as one could have hoped from a film version of the source material (still not good, but relatively painless, at least), and the few gags that work dot a landscape that feels decidedly off without the canned laughter chasing every intentionally bad one-liner. Can at least boast one triumph: spot-on casting for all eight Brady’s and Alice the maid. The funniest bit repeatedly demonstrates Jan’s (Cox) voice-in-her-head madness, but all the winking double entendres in their deadpan line readings usually land flat. Nearly everyone from the original cast shows up in distracting cameos (some deleted from the final film); RuPaul and multiple Monkees also appear.

46/100