Post by No Personality on Apr 10, 2010 10:22:22 GMT -5
This film tries to be a big melting pot of all the plots and events from the TV show's corniest episodes, and ultimately, it fails to make that work. If its' aim was to fit in quietly beside the other Hollywood comedies based on classic TV shows. Right away, it's of The Beverly Hillbillies school of TV show movies. Intended as something of a spoof-of its' source as well as a jab at 90's culture. But it's also more than a mere hop, skip, and jump away from that awful thing (which no one on Earth could claim to have been disappointed by- we all knew it was going to be bad). Not because it has its' finger on the pulse of anything. More like... by mistake, it's so shockingly strange and campy that it's almost subversive as a movie about another form of entertainment - a cult TV show stuck in a totally moral world of their own.
In fact now, culturally, the original Brady Bunch television show probably has more of a reputation for (or it certainly did for most of the 1990's) the cast members having hooked up a lot during the filming and for years afterward. This is made a joke more in the follow-up, A Very Brady Sequel. Oh, and in at least one episode of VH1's I Love the 70's. I've never in my life used the expression "ham-fisted," but I think hammy may be the word to describe most of the ideas for this movie's line of childish gags (guy gets electrocuted and flies through air only to fall on ground and almost get peed-on by dog, older woman has underaged boy frisk her for stolen "office supplies" only to find out she was hiding them in her... , and in one of the movie's deleted scenes which you can only see on television; guy falls through floor of house while using toilet).
However, when you ignore these (which isn't all that hard), the movie does have many moments that make me grin like the nutcases who must have written this. Right from the getgo, it knows it's got something. In the characters of Marsha - the shallow, vane, selfish eldest sibling - and Jan - the misfit loner with budding psychological traumas that slowly cause her to descend into near madness - these filmmakers have something ripe with dark, funny satirical possibilities. And they come pretty close to doing everything they can do with these girls in a PG-13 movie without getting parents in an uproar. They play the subtle card and give Jan a malevolent alternate personality to take out all her frustrations with Marsha without killing anyone. And of course they give the two a very light competitiveness (which plays out a little more in the sequel).
What results of all this inter-Brady character redefinition are several hilarious scenes where Marsha and Jan are pushed to their very limits. I can't think of one intelligent viewer who would come to a movie like this hoping Marsha would get everything she wanted, but that was basically the point of all the Marsha-centered episodes of the TV show. Jan wants things too, but she gets none of them, yet Marsha gets nearly everything. The only time she truly gets a 'raw' deal is when her dorky stepbrothers throw a football at her face and dent her nose, real good, making her look more like something you'd expect to see on Animal Planet, in the zoo. This scene is a masterwork of spiteful, cynical humor. Jealous Jan is watching from behind Marsha's chair and says, "I'm sure no one will ever notice." Then somebody does and Jan can't hide her inner-evil glee.
Then, Marsha utters those famous words that have actually transcended the film's mere cult status, becoming a part of pop culture (most notably, a mantra for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's former wardrobe guru, Carson), "Now I'll never be a teen model!" She continues, saying, "I'll never be anything! What's the point of living?! I might as well die!" The humor is basically found in the sheer absurdity of it. All this over a nose? If she had asked her parents to stay home for 2 days so it could heal, they would have let her. Then had her parents just turned her date for the skyool (actress Christine Taylor pronounces nearly every word she says beginning with a consonant with a "y" before the first vowel) dance away when he arrived at the door, everything would have been fine. Of course, when she goes to the dance, she has a great night anyway, and everything's back-to-perfect by the next morning.
Jan's jealousy with Marsha seems to begin over a simple distaste for Marsha's display of trophies ("I couldn't look into the mirror without seeing the awards of 'THE' Great Marsha Brady. Not everything in this room is yours.")... Ah; sibling rivalry (I know it well)! Though I would like to know what she hoped to accomplish with her self-defeating rant about Marsha not having to wear glasses. Poor Jan, now she's ugly too ("all my friends at school say that glasses make me look positively goofy"). Marsha clearly goes too far when she tells Jan, "you don't have any friends." As though she was expecting to hear Jan say something like, "I know, sad isn't it?" in return. I know what I would have done to Marsha if I were Jan and she said that to me, but Jan mocks her. To which Marsha classically replies, "you're just jealous, Jan." Bingo!
But we love Jan's jealousy. It's what makes her such a compelling movie character with lots of crazy things her jealousy could drive her to do. While the best Marsha gets, for our sake, is a scene where her best friend Norene makes a pass at her and covers it up quickly when Marsha doesn't 'get it.' But Jan has recurring dreams of Marsha being struck over and over, again and again, by the fatal football, and in the film's best scene, wakes in the middle of the night to find a pair of scissors in her hand and gets a cruel notion to give Marsha the ultimate payback...: a haircut! And everyone's favorite embarrassing "so high school" moment (how many times has this happened to you?) where Jan, in search for a new look- dons a big, black afro-wig for the school dance ("Am I a hit? Wow, it worked! I really did make a splash"). Boy, without crazy Jan, this movie would have been really boring, don't you think?
Because the parents are a complete bore (maybe it's their tax problems, makes me uptight every time). Carol's a nympho and Mike's a hunky beast... but they were never like that on the TV show, nor do I get the feeling that they wish they had been. The father never seemed to have an inner "tiger" wanting to get out. Though I always got the feeling that the mother would have preferred to be getting stinking drunk in the South of France rather than teaching Thindy another lesson about tattling. Because she's the only one who had a head on her shoulder. Mike had his head in the clouds and lots of blood running to his libido. In this movie, that is. Then there are those ridiculously annoying Dittmeyers. I mean, living next to the Brady Bunch household would get old real fast and drive any sane person out of their mind. But while these are the kind of people who could grow on you, the Dittmeyers are just pure slime. Although the perpetually hungover housewife did have potential to become the new Margaret from The Addams Family Movie.
There seems to be a running theme in this movie about wives and girlfriends who aren't getting any from their hubbies or boyfriends. The only one who is getting any has a boyfriend who's mean to Peter while she fancies Petey, "in a Gilligan's Island sort of way." But seriously- there's Mrs. Dittmeyer, Doug's bisexual girlfriend, and finally Alice the maid who works for free. Perhaps we shouldn't count her in that list because she finally gets Sam to "deliver his meat" in the end, not like on the TV show. He was played by an older actor on the show, a man who probably had delivered his last "order" before meeting Alice. If she expected to get anything, bad enough that she couldn't wait for Sam, she just has to remember that there's no such thing as a free "meal". So pay up, lady.
Anyway, I did want to talk about how boring this movie was in parts (but hey, even Barbarella was boring sometimes and campy but you can bet Criterion would shake 40 sweaty hands for just a taste owning the rights for it). Try Bobby as the high school safety monitor who makes Iola from Mama's Family (poor gal) spread her legs in hopes that stolen Christmas presents from the town orphanage...I mean, office supplies from the school, um, offices I think... will drop from her clenched thigh muscles. Talk about humiliation as an actress, it's sadder than her appearance in Project: Alf. And can you believe they deleted a scene where Mr. Dittmeyer falls from on a toilet through the floor beneath him, injuring his neck, and therefore forcing him to go to the mall to buy a new toilet so that he would have an excuse to watch The Brady's performing at the mall? He can't help but watch, they're a familiar trainwreck. But everyone else in the mall is rushing to get an autographed perfume bottle from Tori Spelling. I got one for me, are you jealous?
(Only kidding about the autograph, though I wish I weren't) But just when the movie looks like it's in a rut, Jan comes up with a way for the kids to make $20,000... wait, you didn't know? Oooops, did I tattle? I feel so naughty, because I know that when I tattle on others, really all I'm telling them is that I'm a tattletale. That's not the tale I want to tell. Anyway, yeah the Brady's aren't paying their bills. Probably too busy looking the part of the perfect Poster Parents to do something so common as pay bills, like normal people. Those snots; their politeness is a front. Life's just one great big party for the Brady family, these are the people who've no idea what depression is. To them, that word either means a financial deficit or something that you can only get in the tropics. When Jan comes up with this genius idea, someone mistakes her for Marsha at the school bulletin board. She calls back, "I'm not Marsha! I'm Jan!" To which the song on somebody's boombox answers, singing- "just shut up!!!"
She must have taken that personally, 'cause girlfriend packs her afro and like Farrah Fawcett (sans burning her marital bed) says, 'I'm not gonna take it no more'. So she's off on a wild, cross-country adventure with the old softy (aka- the former Jan Brady), her most grounded self (aka- transitional Jan Brady), and "The New Jan Brady" (aka- nutty, psychotic, crazy as a loon, sociopath with a shotgun, headcase from hell Jan Brady, off-Prozac). While a truck driver makes small talk with her, all she can think to herself is, "let's knock over a 7-11! Watch my head spin!! Kill, kill, kill!!!" Now she really can't take the heat anymore and runs back home (like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz?) to her Mommy and jerky sister Marsha. Later, her old Grandmama tells her where she go with her inner voices...
And just like that, Jan is magically cured! Of all her problems. In life. Does the Brady world go on turning? Did Marsha's nose ever grow back to normal or was the whole ending just in Jan's head? What about Thindy; does she lose her lithp, become the Michael Jackson of her siblings' singing rock band, inherit Jan's afro, and finally get the attention Jan gets now that she's not jealous of Marsha anymore? Does Marsha get Davey Jones to sing at the skyool dyance? Does Peter pass health class? Whatever did happen to that dog? What happens to the Dittmeyers; does Eric cut that lame-ass wannabe-grunge hair? How was Misty's science project coming? And does Greg ever get laid? Or, more importantly, does Noreen get laid? These answers and more can be yours... if you watch the movie. Which you'll likely only do if you're as wacked as I am.
