Review: 'Bradys in White House' worst of season
By Phil Gallo
Daily Variety
HOLLYWOOD, California (Reuters) -- There might not be a worse show aired on network television this year than "The Brady Bunch in the White House."
Ostensibly the third installation in the Brady movie franchise, "White House" -- which airs on Fox Friday at 8 p.m. ET -- lacks any of the charms of the two feature films that cleverly wove the out-of-touch Bradys into modern society.
The ridiculous nature of the characters, already inflated in "The Brady Bunch Movie" and "A Very Brady Sequel," is again inflated, but this time to no comic effect. Poor writing, a convoluted concept and dull acting hasten the call for a recount.
"White House's" script, handled by Lloyd Schwartz and Hope Juber, the children of "Brady" creator Sherwood Schwartz, takes the broken vase episode of the classic 1970s sitcom and surrounds it with a preposterous set of circumstances that land Mike Brady (Gary Cole) the presidency of the U.S. with Carol (Shelley Long) as VP. Telepic riffs on a host of original Brady plot points -- Bobby as a crossing guard, Greg as a rock star and wannabe smoker, Marcia's popularity, Peter's volcano science project and Jan's jealousy -- and continues, actually overuses, from the movies, Jan's inner voices, the ensemble's loud clothing and architect jokes.
The nudge-nudge, wink-wink antics -- there to jolt viewers' Brady memories -- smash viewers over the head like a football to the nose.
Cole and Long reprise their roles from the two films but are given far less to work with: Her head-in-the-sand peppiness has no ironic consequences and his overlong attempts at logic are instead overwrought foolishness. The new doe-eyed Greg (Chad Doreck) poorly imitates his bigscreen predecessor while Blake Foster, as Peter, and Max Morrow, as Bobby, are hardly noticeable.
Ashley Drane plays Jan just as Jennifer Elise Cox did in the films, while Autumn Reeser (Marcia) and Sofia Vassilieva (Cindy) lack even an impersonator's command of the characters.
Music from Laurence Juber, an accomplished guitarist who had a stint in Wings, is much more far-reaching than traditional Brady music -- the theme played as various tempos -- and Greg ends up with a song, "Veronica," that, while hokey, is too good to come from the man who would be Johnny Bravo.
