director
Betty Thomas
screenwriters
Laurice Elehwany
Rick Copp
Bonnie Turner
Terry Turner
based
on characters created by
Sherwood Schwartz
producers
David Kirkpatrick
Lloyd J. Schwartz
Sherwood Schwartz
cinematographer
Mac Ahlberg
music
Guy Moon
editor
Peter Teschner
cast
Shelley Long (Carol Brady)
Gary Cole (Mike Brady)
Christine Taylor (Marcia Brady)
Christopher Daniel Barnes (Greg Brady)
Jennifer Elise Cox (Jan Brady)
Paul Sutera (Peter Brady)
Olivia Hack (Cindy Brady)
Jesse Lee (Bobby Brady)
Henriette Mantel (Alice Nelson)
David Graf (Sam Franklin)
Florence Henderson (Grandma)
Jack Noseworthy (Eric Dittmeyer)
Megan Ward (Donna Leonard)
Jean Smart (Mrs. Dena Dittmeyer)
Michael McKean (Mr. Dittmeyer)
David Proval (Electrician)
David Leisure (Jason)
Barry Williams (Music Producer)
RuPaul (Mrs. Cummings)
Ann B. Davis (Trucker)
Davy Jones (Himself)
Micky Dolenz (Himself)
Peter Tork (Himself)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 90m
u.s.
release: 2/17/95
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other betty
thomas films
reviewed on this website:
- private
parts
|
The
fluorescent clothes, the astroturf, the dialogue so chipper it's
surreal, the hair, the songs -- oh, dear God, the songs
.... For about the first two reels, The Brady Bunch Movie
is like nightmarish science fiction. We're in Bradyland, or,
more accurately, Sherwood Schwartzland -- named after the venal
TV producer who gifted us with Gilligan and the Skipper as well
as the Bradys. Schwartz, a baffling man, has actually claimed
social significance for his creations: The Bradys, he has suggested,
symbolize the familial fragmentation of the late 20th century.
(You don't want to know what Gilligan and pals represent, though
I'm sure Quentin Tarantino will deconstruct them in his next
cameo appearance.) Every few years since the death of the original
show, Schwartz has re-animated the Bradys, most recently in a
short-lived 1990 series of hour-long dramas -- yes, dramas
-- chronicling the trials and tribulations of the grown-up Brady
kids. These attempts failed because ... well, primarily because
they sucked, but also because the Bradys' enduring audience
wants them just as they were back in the '70s.
So here's The Brady Bunch Movie, advertised as a fun 'n'
bouncy spoof. Actually, it's among the most deeply cynical movies
ever made, and the film's huge, eager Generation X audience (which
is hardly less cynical) bears me out. This audience doesn't mind
Paramount's naked desire to sell their past back to them, any
more than baby boomers minded The Big Chill. This movie
will enjoy repeat business -- nostalgic twentysomethings will
embrace it as a low-rent cheezoid event, an opportunity to get
stoned and giggle at the outfits, the vapid line readings. Experienced
sober, the movie is just creepy. So much care has gone into the
details of this mutant world, and for what? Fidelity to the source?
Movies like this and The Flintstones
take massive pains to do what is not worth doing.
Aside from that, the movie fails as a comedy. Director Betty
Thomas, shackled to a Brady-anthology script by four TV-saturated
writers, wants to play it both ways. The movie is a satire; the
movie is an homage. The Bradys are out of it; the Bradys are
admirable. Waffle, waffle. The Brady Bunch Movie doesn't
commit to any position on the Bradys, which makes this the ultimate
Gen-X movie. It holds '90s grunge culture up for scorn (the way
Forrest Gump disapproved of the
'60s hippie culture); you may think the film risks alienating
its core audience, but the approach is actually rather shrewd.
Young people who hate the way their lives are going can plug
into the plastic orderliness of the Brady household, longing
for it and feeling superior to it at the same time. So much easier
than putting one's own life in order.
What passes for "satire" here is the contrast between
the gee-whiz Bradys and the "real" '90s. But this contrast
is haplessly beside the point. Of course the Bradys are
out of step in the '90s -- they'd have been out of step in the
actual '70s, too. Given that the Bradys were always just
'50s stereotypes in '70s garb, why not re-dress them for the
'90s -- have them wearing wannabe-hip grunge outfits, the way
the original Bradys took to wearing wannabe-groovy outfits? A
truly biting Bradys satire would comment on the absurdity of
American pop culture in the '90s the way the original show now
comments, unintentionally and retrospectively, on the '70s; it
would assume the vantage point of hindsight and show us how stupid
the hipsters of 1995 will look in twenty years, with their nose
rings and Doc Martens and cappuccino fixation. But Gen-Xers,
a notoriously touchy lot, don't care to be shown how ridiculous
they often are; they'd rather embrace the goofiness of things
past. The smug detachment of Gen-Xers, who take nothing seriously
except themselves and exalt what can't be taken seriously
(i.e., pop garbage like disco), gives the movie a faint aura
of self-satisfaction. I'm OK, you're OK -- let's laugh at the
goofy Bradys.
At the same time, The Brady Bunch Movie sets the Bradys
on a pedestal. There's no problem they can't solve, no mess that
optimism and hugs can't sweep up. Rather than subverting this
sitcom thinking, the movie buys into it. The Bradys are indomitable,
and the proof of that is the movie itself. Yet the script, while
scrupulously transcribing plotlines from the original series,
doesn't discover anything new in them. Marcia's face is disfigured
by a football -- Ow! My nose! -- and the movie misses
its chance to point out that her swollen proboscis, by the '90s
grunge aesthetic, might actually be considered attractive; it
makes her pristine features more interesting. Mostly, the '90s
touches invading Bradyland are crass and obvious (Greg encounters
a carjacker! Ha ha ha! Brilliant!). One promising subplot, in
which Marcia's new friend turns out to be a lesbian with a crush
on her, goes nowhere. It's a bone thrown to lesbian chic, and
it's hypocritical: There's also a taking-it-in-the-ass joke directed
at Mike Brady -- a clear reference to the Mike prototype, Robert
Reed, who died of AIDS complications. So lesbians are chic, but
fags are funny. A lovely, progressive movie.
That's bad, but what the movie does with (and to) poor Jan is
worse. The neurotic Jan, whose life revolves around diverting
attention from her rival Marcia, is the one character with identifiable
human emotions (and the one many women who grew up in the shadow
of a Marcia might relate to). Here, Jan is turned into a contorted
psycho who hears voices. The movie makes brutal fun of her. What
is going on here? Her obsession casts dark shadows across
the astroturf. Betty Thomas and her writers blow a great chance
to show us how a dissatisfied girl going through the agonies
of adolescence and sibling rivalry -- and the only child who
isn't a pod person -- would react to life with the Bradys. Maybe
she would go insane, but we're meant to laugh at her nuttiness,
when we could have been encouraged to see it as the only sane
response. And why not have Jan steal Marcia's new friend away
from her and discover the joys of Sapphic love -- finally finding
someone who appreciates her? For all its forced bounciness, the
movie becomes boring; the missed opportunities pile up, and after
a while my attention floated away from the screen and never returned.
The Brady Bunch Movie is profoundly unimaginative about
its true subject: the promiscuity of pop culture. Themes
are repeated in sitcom after sitcom, down through the decades,
each show tailored to fit the sympathies, prejudices, and mood
of the day. Why do the Bradys have such staying power? Why do
they keep rising from their shallow graves? Certainly it's not
only because they're goofy -- many goofy TV families of the same
period have fallen into oblivion. One answer: The Bradys are
the purest distillation of the squishy-soft sitcom ethos. At
the end of the 22 minutes, the family hugs and learns something.
For years, TV executives have tried to recapture the fuzzy family
falsehood of the Bradys. And they succeed from time to time.
In 2015, we may bear witness to Full House: The Movie,
attended by stoned twentysomethings eager to mock their memories. |