Are We There Yet?

Are We There Yet?

Ice Cube is an actor who is liked by everyone. But that causes two problems for “Are We There Yet?” The first problem is that he must play a bachelor who hates children, and the second problem is that two of them make his life miserable in ways that are supposed to be funny but are cruel and painful instead.

Mr. Cube plays Nick, owner of a sports memorabilia store who one day falls in love with Suzanne (Nia Long) when she pulls up in her SUV outside the strip mall where they’re neighbors; she runs an event-management service across the street. Only hitch: She’s divorced with two kids. Nick hates kids. But one Dark and Stormy Night he drives past Suzanne standing next to her stalled car, offers her a lift and absorbs all kinds of electrical energy from her during the ride. There’s chemistry, it’s going to lead to physics until she sadly observes that they can only be “good friends,” because he doesn’t really care for kids.

But but Nick cares so much for her that he’s prepared to try.

When Suzanne has to go to Vancouver on New Year’s Eve, where 15 city blocks will be closed off for “the biggest party west of Toronto,” according to helpful signs, and her lousy ex-husband reneges on his promise of the weekend to get her to go job of baby sitting their offspring, Nick agrees to transport the young ’uns to Vancouver himself. That’s when things get dicey.

We’ve already seen what these children are capable of doing; their mother takes them bowling once too often at full speed through winding city streets with no traffic around, just to show us. When this poor woman goes out on a date okay, several dates; she may even have slept with some of these guys we see what happens when potential step-dads come calling at the wrong house.

One arrives at the front sidewalk, hits a trip wire, is pelted with buckets of glue, loses his footing on dozens of marbles and falls hard to the ground. Hilarious, right?

Now it’s Nick’s turn. He tries to take the young’s north by plane and then train before settling on automobile in his case, a brand-new Lincoln Navigator sport-utility vehicle, curiously enough the same vehicle that was used in “Johnson Family Vacation,” another film about an SUV being destroyed in bizarre ways during a family adventure.

Young Lindsey (Aleisha Allen) and younger Kevin (Philip Bolden) retain the delusion that their father will return home any day now, and are therefore dedicated to discouraging their mother’s would be boyfriends. This leads to such stunts as writing “Help us!” on a card and holding it up to the car window so a trucker will think they’re being held captive by a child abuser. It also leads to several potentially fatal traffic accidents and one boxing match between Kevin and a deer that stands on its hind legs and seems to think it’s a kangaroo.

But those things occur after Kevin sets fire to Nick once or twice or three times; after he trusses him up in Christmas-tree lights wired into an overtaxed home entertainment system; after he spews carbonated beverages into his face; after he flushes Suzanne’s tampons down the toilet while Nick showers below; after he fills Nick’s suitcase with ice cubes containing dead mice; after Suzanne screams for help because she thinks Nick has killed Kevin when all he did was staple-gun his coat sleeve.

Through all this abuse much of which might be called “Sadistic Home Alone” Cube displays incredible reserves of patience. Mr. Child-Hater is kind, understanding, forgiving, empathetic all things necessary when kids behave like little monsters. But these two go beyond that, and there’s a point at which they’ve crossed so far over the line you wonder why we’re supposed to like them anymore.

Certainly it doesn’t help when they finally reach Vancouver and Suzanne cruelly misreads the situation.

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