Hollywood Product - Are We There Yet?

Genre: Family road trip comedy

Opens: Fri., Jan. 21

The pitch: Child-hating bachelor Nick (Ice Cube) tries to curry favor with hot single mom Suzanne (Nia Long) by driving her hostile offspring, Lindsey (Aleisha Allen) and Kevin (Philip Bolden), from Portland to Vancouver. Cube follows the accident-prone trail that Chevy Chase blazed in the Vacation movies.

Product placement: Nick lavishes so much praise, affection and ultimately grief over his brand new, ill-fated Lincoln Navigator that Are We There Yet? feels more like the tragic love story of a man and his ride.

Money shots: Airport security piles on Nick when Kevin slips a corkscrew in his pocket. Nick trades punches with a panicky deer. Nick imagines the children trussed to the hood of his car like hunting trophies. Nick tries to catch the kids on a freight train by riding a horse. (Yup, it's Ice Cube on horseback.)

Hit singles: When Nick and Lindsey battle over the car stereo, 50 Cent's "What Up Gangsta" loses out to Hampton the Hamster's "Hamster Dance Song." Lindsey brings a crazed kid party under control by karaoke-singing Aretha Franklin's "Respect."

Cameos: Nichelle "Lt. Uhura" Nichols plays the kids' elderly sitter, Miss Mabel, who leers at Nick. "Saturday Night Live's" Tracy Morgan provides the voice of Nick's creepy Satchel Paige bopple-head dashboard doll, who leers at Long, speaks for Nick's bad side and never makes us laugh.

Gross-outs: Kevin accidentally pees on a loud woman in a ladies' room. Kevin projectile-vomits across the Navigator's windshield. Miss Mabel farts in her sleep. And this movie's rated PG?

Fashion statements: Nick takes such pride over his silver "blingage" that when he gives his neck chains to the kids, you know he's reformed his kid-hating ways.

The bottom line: Ice Cube somehow commands two comedy franchises (the Friday and Barbershop films) despite hardly ever doing anything funny. Are We There Yet? amusingly plays off Cube's crabby demeanor, but for every laugh, there's a lame joke or a shameless bid for sentiment, like milking one of Kevin's asthma attacks for suspense. Rather than ask are we there yet, just stay home.