It's a fine line, but A Very Brady Sequel succeeds spectacularly by using every little insipid tic of the TV show and magnifying it just enough to be eerily reminiscent of the original, but still exaggerated enough to be funny. The set, for example, is an exact replica of the Brady house--the Danish modern furniture, the pop-u-luxe floor plan, the goddamn teak stairway--but the Bradys themselves are subtly distorted. Their clothes are perfect, but all of them are supersaturated with tan makeup; they have a grotesque, Max Factor version of that George Hamilton, seventies beige sheen.

The plot, also, negotiates a truce between the original spirit of the sitcom and the spice we've all come to expect from movies in the nineties. The story revolves around a certain antique horse that Carol Brady (Shelley Long) keeps on the Formica counter in the living room. Actually, the horse is a rare Chinese relic worth $20 million, but the Bradys have no idea of its value and plan to donate it to charity. The first Brady Bunch Movie revolved around the idea that while the outside world was in the nineties, the Brady's were still blissfully mired in the seventies. That's still the premise of A Very Brady Sequel, but this time around the conflict between the '70s/'90's is peripheral and another threat has rolled around to spur the action: Mrs. Brady's first husband has reappeared to claim both Carol and the horse.

Poor Carol is in a tough spot here, and even considers changing her hair style as she grapples with the moral dilemma of which man is really her mate. The exciting development for Brady Bunch fans though is that at last we get to witness a violation of The Brady Taboo. The Brady Taboo says: Never mention the time before this group somehow formed a family and we all became the Brady Bunch. Once violated, the floodgates bust open. Greg and Marsha finally realize they aren't really brother and sister and begin to exchange lustful looks. (Sadly, Mr. Brady still doesn't mention his first wife.)

The acting, though, is the heart of what makes A Very Brady Sequel so much fun to watch. The performances range from Jennifer Elise Cox's hair-swinging imitation of Jan, to Gary Cole's (who played the devil/Sheriff on TV's American Gothic) dead-on, spookily patriarchal rendition of Mike Brady, originally played by Robert Reed. Christine Taylor's snooty take on Marsha, a girl obsessed with hair care, is also great. None of these performances will mean anything though if you haven't logged an embarrassing chunk of pre-teen hours mainlining the sitcom straight from the tube. One drawback of A Very Brady Sequel is that it's one gigantic in-joke, and if you had something better to do during the primetime hours of 1969-1974 (or the subsequent re-runs), I can't imagine this movie would be very interesting. Apparently, not many of us had anything better to do; the theater audience seemed intimately familiar with The Brady Bunch. When a dog streaked across screen, half of us involuntarily exclaimed "Tiger!"