If you’re going to be doing a Cinematic remake of a 60’s or 70’s television show, probably the best way to go about it is the way that Paramount did it with their two wonderful BRADY BUNCH movies. Not really true “remakes” of the show, these were more like 2 hour long Saturday Night Live Skits, spoofing the Brady Bunch as well as paying homage to the show.
While the show did paint the Bradys in a zany caricature light (a family eternally happy and stuck in their 1970’s styles), it was really just poking gentle fun at the show, because just like Forrest Gump or Chance the Gardener, no matter how eccentric the family got, their innocence and good natured ways always made them come out unscathed and victorious!
As Silly as the movies got, they still retained the basic fundamentals of the show, which was the love they had as a family and their honest hearts. All the actors really nailed their parts: Gary Cole and Shelly Long as earnest patents Mike and Carol Brady, and especially Jennifer Elise Cox's hilarious take on troubled middle child Jan! And GOD DAMN, is Christine Taylor as Marcia just the hottest thing this side of Maureen McCormick or WHAT?! She’s absolutely freakin’ HOT!
So much attention to the "little" things made you know that these writers were REAL fans of the show- things like "Pork Chops and Applesauce" scribbled on the grocery list chalkboard or "Pilgrim Costumes" written on a box in the garage, these were fun little tidbits that you only "got" if you watched the show a lot as a kid! And the biggest laugh I got was when guest star Tim Matheson (posing as Carol's long lost husband) trips out on magic mushrooms and the psychedelic vision he sees is...the BRADY KIDS cartoon with Marlon the Magic Bird and Ping and Pong the Pandas! AHAHAHAHAHA, TOO FUNNY!
So I loved both THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE and its sequel, the aptly titled A VERY BRADY SEQUEL, but somehow I’d only owned the first movie, and that was on VHS! So I was very happy to see that they’d actually managed to put BOTH movies on a VERY affordable DVD set at Wal-Mart- $13.00 for this “BRADY BUNCH OF MOVIES” set! It was time for some Marcia viewing!
This cool set included both movies as well as a made-for-TV one called “The Bradys In the White House”. Unlike the two cinematic ones, however, this one (though still starring Gary Cole and Shelley Long as Mike and Carol) was a total misfire, and all the sensibilities of the actual show were ignored in favor of vapid slapstick. Oh Well, that wasn’t why I bought the set anyway!
The Set rounded things up with another made for TV movie, GROWING UP BRADY, a movie based on Barry “Greg” Williams book of the same name! Williams himself introduces and narrates the show, giving his version of the Brady bunch as how it was to grow up on the set (and of his lifelong love of Maureen McCormick, who can blame him!) and it ended up being a nice conclusion to the Marathon session!
