the brady bunch movie is less a motion picture than a minor pop event . forget your reruns and forget your nick at nite ; this dead-on recreation of the fabled seventies sitcom is both so exhilarating * and * so disturbing that you half-expect to see the ghost of rod serling appear in the narrative . did we really act this way twenty years ago ? of course not . the genius of the brady bunch movie is how it heightens the surreality of the family unit from hell by fast-forwarding them into the future . it's 1995 and greg still calls the chicks " groovy , " and marsha still considers hair-brushing the high point of her day . bell bottoms are in , and alice has yet to move out . nothing has changed within the garish walls of brady manor and , so , the plot has the family stepping out into the real world , where they are confronted by everything from carjackers to lesbians . granted , nothing * too * serious happens here . with the exception of some heavy sexual innuendo , the brady bunch movie is about as sanitary as the source material . and that's too bad . director betty thomas ( of tv's " hill street blues " fame ) doesn't cut between real-life and brady-life enough to make the contrast as glaring as it should be . the edge isn't sharp enough . * we * know that what we're watching is funky , though , so it's not that much of a problem . nor are the glaring low production standards . the cast is uniformly appealing . shelly long seems to have found her niche under awful hair , while gary cole is right on the mark with dad's sing-song truisms . christine taylor is the best of the brady kids . she's a cheery delight as marsha * and * is a dead ringer for maureen mccormick . her foil is jennifer elise cox , who is a howl as the brooding jan . 
