Are We There Yet?/Are We Done Yet? Ice Cube 2007 DVD Top-quality

Are We There Yet?
Ice Cube has turned his frown upside down with the family-friendly screwball road movie Are We There Yet?. We know the actor/rapper can use his trademark scowl to be funny (the Friday and Barbershop series), or to be mean (Boyz ‘N the Hood )–but can he use it to melt kids’ hearts? That’s the question Are We There Yet? answers with a resounding yes for youngsters in the audience (which will be the lions’ share), but it’ll probably be an emphatic shrug for the grownups. The contrived plot has Cube playing a wannabe-player (as in ladies’ man) and ex-player (as in washed-up minor league baseball star) who now owns a sports memorabilia business. His partner, played by Jay Mohr is just a throwaway, as is the talented Nia Long ( Big Momma’s House), the single mom that Cube sets his blinged-out sights on. To try to get in her good graces, he offers to transport her two bratty kids in his pride-and-joy Lincoln Navigator for a joy ride to a distant city where she’s attending an emergency business meeting so they can have a New Year’s Eve celebration together.
This kiddies version of Road Trip and Planes, Trains and Automobiles has its cute moments, but plenty more gross-out ones which will please the kids no end, especially as the Navigator gets more and more trashed. Suffice to say they all learn about each others’ good sides and hearts are suitably melted all around–until after the credits roll, then you’ll probably forget about the whole thing. –Ted Fry
Are We Done Yet?
If, 18 years ago, you’d told rapper Ice Cube he would have a hit family movie called Are We There Yet?, he would’ve sneered in your face. Yet here he is with that movie’s sequel, Are We Done Yet?, in which Nick Persons (Cube) takes his new wife Suzanne (Nia Long) and her two cantankerous kids out to an old house in the country. Unfortunately, the house proves to have a few problems, and Nick finds himself at the mercy of real estate agent/contractor/house inspector/midwife Chuck (John C. McGinley, Scrubs), who before long is turning Nick’s house–and his life–inside out.
The script for Are We Done Yet? is based on a classic (though little remembered) Cary Grant movie, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. While Cube doesn’t have Grant’s comic skills, he has grown into a comfortable and charming screen presence, and he gives this ramshackle entertainment a decent foundation. But it’s McGinley who steals the movie with his truly bizarre yet mesmerizing performance. Aside from some pratfalls, Cube spends most of the movie staring in horror and astonishment at McGinley as the tall lanky white man walks a very fine line between comedy and schizophrenia