Starring Ice Cube, Nia Long, and John C. McGinley. Rated G.

I have mixed feelings about Ice Cube having become, incontrovertibly, the cuddliest member of N.W.A. But who was it going to be, Eazy-E? No. Ice Cube was the one with the political consciousness, the financial savvy, the talent for acting–the smarts, really. As a showman, he'd know that people like smiles. There's a video of him on YouTube doing the Crip Walk while wearing a tentative, modest grin. It's sort of heartwarming to see natural geniality emerging from a thuggish exterior. But that tendency has now been cruelly exploited in Are We Done Yet?, a film so slack and sappy that it makes Ice Cube's Friday After Next look like The 120 Days of Sodom.

This remake of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House has been refitted as a sequel to Ice Cube's 2005 hit Are We There Yet?, memorable for the fact that it's one of the few locally shot productions in which Vancouver is actually meant to be Vancouver (the movie is about Ice Cube giving girlfriend Nia Long's insufferable brats a lift to here from Portland).

Two years later, Ice Cube and Long's characters are married and expecting twins. He needs space for his growing family and new publishing venture, so he moves them out to the sticks (still played by Vancouver) into a gigantic Queen Anne fixer-upper. The kids (played by Aleisha Allen and Philip Bolden), being insufferable brats, whine about the mall and their asthma, accuse the saintly Ice Cube of neglect, and sullenly demand treats. These monsters cheer up only when their dad falls through the roof or electrocutes himself; the house, of course, turns out to be a rickety deathtrap, hence the de facto addition of the local contractor, played by wacky-yet-sinister character actor John C. McGinley, of Scrubs.

At this point, the movie really should use the abundant power tools in the fashion of Hostel or Saw. I could definitely see the Ice Cube character having the motivation and raw materials to make a splatter epic to satiate Straight horror reviewer Steve Newton. Instead, we must watch Ice Cube being accused of being a terrible husband, an insensitive father, a cheapskate, and incompetent while all around him his dreadful mistake of a house falls to pieces. And you thought movies were for escapism! Are We Finished This Series Yet?