The Brady Bunch Movie

Betty Thomas, USA 1995, 88 minutes

"This is a story..." sang the title tune to one of the defining US sitcoms of the 1970's. The Brady Bunch were an All-American, wholesome, shiny-toothed, nuclear family that appeared, just getting along in that all-American, wholesome way. The Brady Bunch Movie brings them to celluloid for the first time, in one of the funniest films of 1995.

The key joke, and it works, is that the Brady Bunch haven't changed one bit in the past twenty years, while all around went through an oil crisis, the Eighties "Greed Is Good" Reagan era, the end of the cold war and the postrecession Nineties. So while the family still exude peace, love and flares, society has changed and it's the clash of values and pastels that drives this story along.

The Brady family are Gary (TV's Midnight Caller, American Gothic) Cole and Shelley Long as the ever smiling Papa Mike and Mom. Between them, their six kids and the maid, they fulfil every Seventies stereotype and fashion cliché, living in their immaculate and immaculately preserved house. Unfortunately, in the big bad world outside their neighbour Mr Ditmeyer wants the Brady's to leave their home, so that he can profit from a typical nineties megabucks property deal. He lands the Brady's in a heap of trouble that means they need money fast. The family are concerned, but do they worry? Of course not, something is bound to come along...

The cast are all excellent, with the childrens characters well fleshed out (as stereotypes, if that is not a contradiction). Particular mention to Jan (Jennifer Elise Cox) who suffers from inner voices because of her jealousy of Marcia (Christine Taylor), who remains oblivious to the thoughts of hate eminating from her sister. A busload of cameos support the laughs, and the whole story careers along never quite out of control, but fast enough to keep you entertained until the bizarrely happy ending and the beserk end credits.

Watch, laugh and be glad your parents left the Seventies behind.

Review by Scott M Keir
Taken from EUFS Programme 1997-98