Nick (Ice Cube) owns a sports memorabilia shop and one day happens upon Suzanne (Nia Long) who immediately takes his fancy.

Being the smooth operator that he is Nick decides to make a move, only to find Suzanne's two children, Lindsey and Kevin, are a little over-protective of their mother.

After becoming "friends" (much to the disappointment of Nick) he makes the foolish gesture of offering to take her kids to Canada when Suzanne's plans go awry.

Obscuring the journey is the fact that these two kids will stop at nothing to prevent the would-be suitor from successfully completing this act of goodwill to impress their mum.

Predictable from start to finish it's hard to believe that this was once the man who penned a ditty named F**k Tha Police. This sanitised version of Ice Cube is unsettling to say the least.

But even more disturbing are the obnoxious child actors whose purpose in the film, one might argue, is to be precisely that.

However, what seems to be lost on Levant is the fact that at no point – not even the point at which the kids find out their father has moved on without them - does the overwhelming wave of tears and sniffles ever arrive.

Kids may have a chuckle at the various pee-pee/vomit jokes along the way, heck they might even enjoy the various pratfalls that litter the entire movie, but as the slapstick drags on painfully like a wounded dog to its irritating and predictable death of a conclusion, it left this audience with the inimitable question...

Is it over yet?

Vickie Juett.