Thursday Movie Picks: Step Families

Thursday means a lot of things. It means that the work week is almost over. Pretty soon, it will mean football. Shortly after that, it will mean turkey. Most importantly, it means more Thursday Movie Picks. That, of course, is the wonderful meme hosted by Wanderer at Wandering Through the Shelves. Click the link to find out the rules and how to get in on this. Then get in on this. The topic this week is The Brady Bunch. Okay, not really, but close. It's step families. Usually, I try to go with hidden gems. However, I'm feeling in a bit of an ornery mood, so I'm going with three that are terrible. Proceed at your own risk.

This is the not-at-all-highly anticipated sequel to the cute Are We There Yet? in which Nick (Ice Cube) wins over Suzanne (Nia Long) by escorting her children not so safely to Canada where she is on business. The two are now married and moving into a brand new house that's somewhat of a fixer-upper, to say the least. It's simply one terrible gag after another. The entirety of the plot is Nick pitching a bitch at the top of his lungs as local yokel Chuck (John C. McGinley) cons him over and over and over...and over again. It occupies a dubious place in movie history as it is that rare movie that is not only a sequel, but a remake of a movie that had nothing to do with its predecessor, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. This means it's a sucky sequel AND a sucky remake.


Speaking of sucky remakes. Let's get into another one. This time, the Korean horror film A Tale of Two Sisters was butchered by good ol' American know-how. Like its predecessor, The Uninvited features Anna (Emily Browning), a girl who has just come home from a mental institution. She still suffers ghastly nightmares and visions. Plus she has to deal with her whiny older sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel). They both have to deal with Rachel, their evil stepmom played very poorly by Elizabeth Banks. Somehow, the normally excellent David Strathairn got roped into playing the dead. Well, not somehow. His performance looks very much like he was slumming for a paycheck. Sigh.


To hell with it. We're going all remakes this week. The 1987 flick of the same name is the victim, here. We start the movie with David (Dylan Walsh) leaving behind the wife and kids he just murdered. Shortly after this, we see him all happy and in love with a new woman who has kids of her own. And no surprise to us, Dylan is absolutely off his rocker. You know what? Rather than coming up with new stuff to say about this film, I'm just going to quote myself from an old review. "The pedal stays to the metal. It throws everything at you, repeatedly. David suddenly appears out of nowhere about a thousand times, always accompanied by a hard note of music. He’s also prone to violence at the drop of a hat which leads to a knock-down drag-out finale. We even get the time-tested cat thrown across the camera to create a jump-scare." Oh, it's THAT kind of movie. In case I couldn't remember, that old review also says "The stupidity is unending." However, those are precisely the reasons I can't hate this one. It goes so far over the top it's almost not to be believed. In other words, it's so bad it's awesome.