Played for laughs but sadly lacking, ARE WE DONE YET? manages to take a funny premise and squeeze it dry of every teensy morsel of humour. As heavy handed as the hammer with which Ice Cube's well meaning Nick Persons tries to fix his crumbling house, the film relies on its broad comedy, but forgets the importance of script and characters. Nothing is real, nor do we care for any of the characters, despite the filmmakers' attempts to inject a syringe-full of syrupy sentimentality at the end.

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Once again placing his gangsta credentials in serious jeopardy, the rapper Ice Cube returns to the multiplex with ARE WE DONE YET?, an ill-advised sequel to ARE WE THERE YET? and a feeble fable of better parenting through home improvement. Loosely based on the 1948 Cary Grant comedy MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE, this latest addition to the interrogatory franchise finds Nick Persons (Ice Cube) married to Suzanne (Nia Long) and stepfather to her two children. When Suzanne announces she is pregnant (“By who?” asks a startled Nick), the family exchanges his cramped New York apartment for a rural fixer-upper with more problems than square feet. While Hank Nelken’s slapstick-happy screenplay subjects Nick to countless indignities - including burns, electrocution and attacks by outraged wildlife - Steve Carr directs as though making a very special episode of EXTREME MAKEOVER: HOME EDITION. Rising above the melee of blind pipe fitters and Hawaiian dry-rot specialists, however, is a marvelous John C. McGinley, playing a dodgy jack-of-all-trades with the kind of energy that forces other actors to step up their game. He is so good that the script’s last-minute gift of a dead wife is completely unnecessary: he redeems his character through acting skill alone.

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ARE WE DONE YET? purports to be a remake of the 1948 Cary Grant-Myrna Loy charmer, MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE, which also inspired another obtuse remake, 1986's THE MONEY PIT. The problem with the new film is that Ice Cube is too cool for the plot's nonsense. The faulty house and McGinley's behavior never inspire him to blow his top. We need to feel Nick's frustration, and he needs to be smarter than and visibly exasperated by the escalating craziness. The movie needs Richard Dreyfuss. It also needs actual escalation. Instead, the woefully uninspired director Steve Carr (...) drags us from one flat, kid-tickling mishap to another, including a fight with a talking raccoon and, later, another with a large fish. But while one critic didn't laugh, some children and a few grownups did, so the movie must count as some kind of success.

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