Movies


God, I watched this for the first time in at least a decade last night. I showed it to my twelve-year-old daughter India and she loved it. Truth be told, so did I. You can laugh all day long, but I love this movie.

Yes, when I was a kid, I spent many hours in front of the TV set, watching what the stations decided to show me. Thankfully, I've lost that vile habit, but I know The Brady Bunch. I used to look forward to it every Friday night. God help me, it was The Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222 and The Odd Couple. If I was feeling really frisky, I'd watch Love, American Style at 10 PM.

Yes, it's embarrassing to relate that today, but I was young.

When I first heard about The Brady Bunch Movie, I had absolutely no intention of seeing it. I mean, it had to suck, didn't it? But I began hearing that it was really funny. One Saturday night when I was feeling particularly down, I rented it. On VHS. How quaint, huh?

The Brady Bunch Movie was exactly the medicine that I needed that night. I laughed like a fool all through it and I felt like a bit of a fool too, because the film was at least partially laughing at me. Me and others that watched The Brady Bunch religiously.

The Brady Bunch Movie came out smack dab in the middle of the 1990's and while I found many of the styles and trends of that decade to be dreary and uninspired, it almost made me nostalgic for that time period. The BBunch Movie revels in 90's music, even while it laughed at many trappings of the 1970's.

While this Brady Bunch Movie is a comedy and a parody of an old TV show, maybe there is a bit more to it. Nostalgia is a funny thing and it hits all of us like a ton of bricks sooner or later. And the older you get, the more wistful you tend to be about times past. Even through the ridiculous situations in this film, I felt a deep longing for the innocence and happy times of my childhood, when you really could possibly believe that such a household could exist. Away from judgemental parents that fought and drank and made themselves and everyone else miserable. A perfect family where everything was wholesome and squeaky clean.

And when Davy Jones shows up at the high school dance and sings Girl with that thrash-rock band, I get a bit choked up. I'm not entirely sure why, but I do. I guess that old Nostalgia beastie was getting to me again. I loved The Monkies when I was a kid.

Despite being shamefully corny and ridiculous, I maintain that The Brady Bunch Movie is an extremely clever and well written film. It hits most of the right notes, with sly humor and genuine wit, even if the Michael McKean character and the slapstick shtick was a bit too over-the-top for my tastes. Director Betty Thomas took a cultural icon, just as she later did with Howard Stern's Private Parts, and made it into a warped history lesson of skewed American culture.

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