ICE Cube has adopted many guises during his long journey from gangsta rap to family entertainment, but it still comes as a surprise to discover the man who once urged us to Kill at Will stepping into shoes previously worn by Cary Grant. Are We Done Yet? - oh please, please, say yes - is unusual in that it is both a sequel and a remake.
The characters who singularly failed to amuse us in Are We There Yet? have now formed themselves into a family and, after moving to the country, are encountering the sort of household disasters that befell Grant in Mr Blandings Builds His Dreamhouse.
We should, I suppose, count ourselves lucky. Ghastly as Are We Done Yet? undoubtedly is, the prospect of Mr Cube chewing up, say, The Philadelphia Story or Notorious fairly chills the blood.
If you were among the perplexing number of people who paid to see Are We There Yet? you will recall that the picture concerned an angry fat man driving two abrasive children across a stretch of North America.
Now married to the kids' mother, he finds his apartment too small for his new family and, when his wife announces the imminent arrival of another young one, packs everybody into the SUV and makes for the country. As in Richard Benjamin's The Money Pit - which was coyer about its relationship to Mr Blandings - the big house the family purchases quickly reveals a propensity to spring leaks and dump large sections of masonry on its occupants' heads.
Though Ice Cube is unlikely ever to be confused with the former Archie Leach, he is, to be fair, charming enough company in this sort of romp. And John C McGinley, camp beyond the imaginings of the people at www.tent.com, will certainly keep you awake with his many fabulous performances as a local eccentric who acts as estate agent, contractor and building inspector.
But the jokes are so poundingly lame and the glutinous sentimentality so overpowering that you end up cheering the building's apparent attempts to annihilate the family Cube. Sadly, it ends with a suggestion that they might not be done quite yet. DONALD CLARKE
