The Brady Bunch Movie

Although the current trend of transforming yesterday's mediocre 30-minute television programs into today's mediocre two-hour movies has got to be one of the seven signs of the apocalypse, The Brady Bunch Movie is much better than most of its ilk. Nestled in their Seventies cocoon, the Bradys of today are living in a time warp, hilariously out of sync with the Nineties. They're freaks, a Republican's dream, the village idiots of suburbia. Only the troubled Jan seems to have one foot in these perilous times. The movie's four screenwriters have threaded the plot lines of the TV show's more memorable episodes into the script so that the movie becomes a Trivial Pursuit exercise in Brady Bunch lore. The cast has a good time, with some of the performances uncannily capturing the originals. Special mention should also go to Smart as the lush living next door, who lusts after every Brady with a penis, and to RuPaul, who works it as a junior high school guidance counselor. As real as the Astroturf in the Brady's backyard and as eager to please as Alice's meat loaf, The Brady Bunch Movie is -- to exhaust this string of metaphors -- pure junk food. But like most junk food, it sure tastes good.