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The Fun 'Bunch' Is Back

In the 1970s, few TV shows were goofier than "The Brady Bunch." In this sitcom, which aired between 1969 and 1974, widower Mike Brady and widow Carol Brady united his three sons with her three daughters in one fenced-in, polyester-clad, laugh-track paradise. While Dad pontificated, Mom beamed—in that one-of-a-kind shag ’do. While the children squabbled over telephone rights, housekeeper Alice made bad jokes and meatloaf.

"The Brady Bunch Movie," made in 1995, brought the polyester bunch into the cynical ’90s, in which the family (still the same age but living in present-day Los Angeles) remained resolutely inside their time bubble. Its success has led to the equally funny "A Very Brady Sequel," in which Gary Cole (Mike Brady), Shelley Long (Carol), Christine Taylor (Marcia) and Henriette Mantel (Alice) and company—all of them returnees from the first movie—make gentle fun of the bell-bottom culture.

The story, which mirrors the guest-from-hell plot from that other TV-to-film sequel, "Addams Family Values," is laughably thin: Schemer Roy (Tim Matheson) talks his way into the Brady household, pretending to be Carol Brady’s believed-dead first husband. Roy’s after the horse statue that sits downstairs, a rare piece from the Tang (get it?) dynasty that’s worth $26 million.

But this story line provides opportunity for many laughs. The family is still in rare form. (They take impostor Roy at his word, for instance, when he claims his appearance has changed because "an elephant stepped on my face in Kuala Lumpur.") Long is wonderful as Carol Brady, exuding glazed serenity. As Alice, Mantel has TV counterpart Ann B. Davis’s grimacing facial expressions down to a domestic science. Christopher Daniel Barnes is just right as Greg, the would-be groovy bachelor, wearing the dorkiest of duds. Taylor is almost scary as Marcia, the chilly princess who reigns over her homely sisters. And Cole is a scream as Mike, who continues to tilt at the windmills of ’90s reality. When a telephone salesman tries to sell him something called cable, which—get this—goes underground and offers more than 100 channels, the Brady patriarch cuts him off with a sanctimonious smile.

"I’m sorry," he says, "but you’re going to have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool my brain." "A Very Brady Sequel" isn’t great, but it’s enjoyable. It’s like watching a highlights tape of sitcom episodes, but with that latter-day twist. When Alice pokes around among Roy’s things, she finds a package of mushrooms that she innocently tosses into a special spaghetti sauce just for him. But oops, those ’shrooms are hallucinogenic. When Greg and Marcia argue over who gets to use the attic for their private pad, Marcia retorts, "There’s a new thing called women’s lib. It means they get everything they want." This movie’s for anyone who was alive in that decade—and remembers it with pain. But it’s also for everyone else. This suburban family, so into cultural denial, isn’t so out of place. Look around any mall, look at the bell-bottoms, smell the patchouli oil. The Bradys, it seems, are everywhere.

A VERY BRADY SEQUEL (PG-13) — Contains sexual innuendo and tacky clothing.