The Brady Bunch Movie

In the movie business, timing is everything. Who knows if "Forrest Gump" would have become a runaway phenomenon with a fall release, instead of coming out in the summer.

And placing "The Brady Bunch Movie" to arrive hot on the heels of "Billy Madison" and "The Jerky Boys" was a very wise move — it makes the Bradys look better. At least for the first couple of minutes.

As with "The Beverly Hillbillies," "The Brady Bunch Movie" is just another weak attempt to hit our nostalgia buttons, while simultaneously lampooning the old TV series and its late '60s/early '70s sensibilities.

The gimmick here is that the Bradys are stuck in the '70s, while the world around them is definitely in the '90s. The Bradys are all sweetness and light, incessantly chipper and naive to a fault, while everyone around them is cynical, angry and mean-spirited.

To put this contrast on display, the filmmakers (TV veteran Betty Thomas directed from a screenplay by four writers) have chosen to include all kinds of cheap, vulgar sexual gags. Someone obviously thought this was a clever way of demonstrating how out-of-step the Bradys are, but it feels more like the result of desperation than creativity. (It also makes much of the movie unsuitable for youngsters.)

For those who may not know — if you've been in a cave for 25 years — the premise of "The Brady Bunch" is that a woman with three daughters and a man with three sons marry and bring their joint family together, a sort of "Yours, Mine and Ours"-TV sitcom style.

And the film's casting is pretty good, with young actors who resemble the six kids from the old show playing the appropriate roles. Shelley Long and Gary Cole are parents Carol and Mike, and cook/maid/all-around housekeeper and referee Alice is played by Henriette Mantel.

The film's central plot has the Bradys' Los Angeles home being threatened by redevelopment, as their next-door neighbor Ditmeyer (Michael McKean) schemes to force them out. If that's not enough, their property tax is overdue, so the Bradys must come up with $20,000 by the end of the week or see their home auctioned off. (Ditmeyer's alcoholic wife, who has eyes for Mike — and his sons — is played by Jean Smart, a real step down for the former star of TV's "Designing Women.")