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'Are We There Yet?': Is it over yet?

By Hap Erstein
Palm Beach Post

Do you suppose someone convinced Ice Cube that he needed to expand his movie career by going after the kiddie market?

What else could explain Are We There Yet?, a juvenile comedy in which the star of the Friday and Barbershop franchises is teamed with a pair of obnoxious tots in a mean-spirited car-wrecking road trip?

Columbia Pictures 'Are We There Yet?' C- The verdict: Ice Cube and kids: Not a winning combo in this tired road trip romp. Director: Brian Levant Starring: Ice Cube, Nia Long Run time: 103 minutes Release date: Jan. 21, 2005 Rating: PG for language and rude humor See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer   -- Trailers require Quicktime [an error occurred while processing this directive]

That The Cube-man survives the ordeal with his screen charisma intact is nothing short of miraculous.

Cube plays Portland, Ore., sports memorabilia store owner Nick Persons, a man about town, particularly with his new pride and joy, a Lincoln Navigator SUV. He spies and instantly falls for Suzanne Kingston (Nia Long of Alfie), a foxy proprietress of a party goods shop across the street from Nick's place.

The first obstacle in the way of their romantic bliss is that Suzanne is a single mom raising a pair of youngsters, Lindsay (Aleisha Allen) and Kevin (Philip Daniel Bolden). Naturally, Nick cannot bear to be around kids.

Still bitter about her ex-spouse, Suzanne holds Nick's advances at arm's length. But when she has to be in Vancouver to staff a New Year's Eve party, instead of hiring a baby sitter, she improbably enlists Nick to escort her children there to join her. The premise is lame, but then so is the payoff.

Lindsay and Kevin are still hoping their parents will reunite, so the little brats do whatever it takes to chase away all of Suzanne's prospective boyfriends. Anyway, after aborted attempts to hop a plane or take a train, Nick is stuck driving the kids in his shiny SUV, which is reduced to rubble.

It is hard to fathom why it took four people to write this screenplay, which is a series of road mishaps, near-miss crashes, careens down ravines and plenty of bodily fluid and projectile vomiting jokes.

There is not much here for an actor to play, but Long gives a particularly one-note performance, while Allen and Bolden come off as professional wind-up toys rather than kids. Cube remains winning even when the material lets him down, which is pretty continuously throughout Are We There Yet?