Are we there yet?

Herald rating: ***

Nick owns a sports collectibles store. Suzanne runs an event management firm over the road. Are they destined to get together for the main event?

Not on the surface. She is a divorced mum with two kids. He hates kids. One night her car breaks down and he offers her a lift. There is chemistry ... but he hates kids.

And these are not nice kids. Lindsey (Aleisha Allen) and Kevin (Philip Bolden) believe their dad will come home some day and the best thing they can do in the meantime is scare off Mum's wannabe boyfriends.

At New Year Suzanne (Nia Long) flies to Vancouver to organise a society bash. Her ex is supposed to babysit the kids. He cops out and Nick (Ice Cube) agrees to take them north. Planes and trains fall through - they'll have to drive.

This gives our junior terrorists plenty of opportunity to ruin Nick's weekend, disrupt the North American highway systems, and finally write off Nick's SUV.

Throughout the drama Nick reveals that, deep down, he's not a child-hater - he is gentle, understanding and forgiving and it's the kids who have the problems.

However, when they get to Vancouver, their mother will take some convincing.

It's all pretty mean stuff, as producer Cube and director Brian Levant explain in their behind-the-scenes feature: "We believe in rough-edged comedy."

Few Kiwi sports fans are likely to be as impressed as Levant on his Tour Of Nick's Fine Sports Collectibles, unless they have an intimate interest in US sporting trivia. There's one deleted scene and three scene-to-storyboard comparisons, a couple of DVD-ROM games and a blooper reel.

* DVD, Video rental November 30