The Brady Bunch in the White House (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	85:30
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Neal Israel
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Shelley Long Gary Cole
Case	?
RPI	$24.95	Music	Lawrence Juber

    Those of you who thought that nothing could be worse than the first two Brady Bunch movies ... Well, I'm sure some of you may take perverse pleasure in being proven wrong, for now we are being presented with a "third" instalment of the fabulously and wholesomely zany family.

    This is a made-for-TV movie that has the word "budget" written all over it. All the children have been re-cast, with only Gary Cole and Shelley Long reprising their roles as Mike and Carol. Even Alice is played by a new actress (Tannis Burnett) who looks nothing like the original Alice. The film is written by Lloyd J. Schwartz and Hope Juber, who happens to be the son and daughter of the show's creator Sherwood Schwartz.

    Safety Monitor Bobby (Max Morrow) rescues a cat from an old warehouse and discovers a wallet with a lottery ticket. As luck would have it, it contains the winning lottery numbers and the Brady family, honest to a fault, struggles to find the rightful owner and eventually donates the winning money (over $60m!) to a "home for homeless architects."

    Due to an amazing set of circumstances, Mike Brady is congratulated by none other than the President of the United States (Dave Nichols), who just happens to be looking for a new Vice President to go to re-election. As the administration has been plagued by recent scandals, the President is looking for a squeaky clean candidate with an unblemished record. Guess what? Mike Brady looks eminently qualified!

    The pair eventually got elected, but before the President can be sworn in, his shady past catches up with him and he is forced to resign. By default, Mike Brady becomes the new President of the United States!

    He then appoints Carol as the Vice President and soon the First Family of Television becomes the First Family of the nation. They pack their belongings, and leave their beloved home to live in the White House.

    The rest of the film is about the family's adventures in Washington. The kids accidentally break a "priceless Ming vase", and try to cover the damage. Marcia (Autumn Reeser) invites her friends to an official "slumber party" at the White House, and Jan (Ashley Drane) continues to be tormented by inner voices, who now include Abraham Lincoln!

    Needless to say, there are those that resent the Brady's ascent to the highest office in the land, and soon are hatching plots to bring them down in scandal ... What will happen?

    The film rehashes some elements from the previous two films, including Cindy's (Sofia Vassilieva) tendency to tattle, Greg (Chad Doreck) and Marcia's attraction for each other, as well as the Tang dynasty horse. However, I don't really like the new cast, and generally this film is not as polished as the previous two.

Video

    This is a (presumably) 1.33:1 full-frame transfer, since it is intended for TV broadcast.

    The transfer seems to have been sourced from a film print, since I can spot various tiny black marks on screen. Colours are well rendered. Detail levels are okay, apart from a tendency towards pixelization. Apart from that, I did not notice any other artefacts.

    There are no subtitle tracks on this single sided single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is only one audio track: English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s).

    Although the surround flag has not been set, the film claims to be encoded in Dolby Surround.

    In any case, engaging Dolby Pro Logic II yields a pleasant ambience in the surround channels for background music, and once or twice I even noticed a Foley effect directed towards the rear channels.

    Dialogue quality is okay, and there are no audio synchronization issues.

    Overall, the quality of the audio track is average.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There are no extras. The menus are full frame and static.

    This title does not appear to be currently released in Region 1.

    The Brady Bunch At The White House appears to be yet another movie-length adaptation of the characters from the TV sitcom series. This is a made-for-TV film, and suffers from lower production, casting, and screenplay quality compared with the previous theatrical films.

    The full frame video transfer is okay.

    The audio transfer is okay.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall