Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip Review

While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip is a fun time for the whole family to enjoy on Disney+.

That’s why a follow-up to that movie, though with an entirely different family, in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip feels like a breath of fresh air. Few simple comedies like these get made at Disney anymore. And yet, it was their bread and butter in the 1990s and early 2000s, especially in their live-action department.

Sadly, one will have to see Marvin Lemus’ follow-up to the Very Bad Day on Disney+ as opposed to cinemas, when it could’ve turned a profit. After all, the first movie grossed a whopping $100 million on a $28 million budget. Maybe the sequel wouldn’t have made those numbers, but it certainly would have a chance to fare much better than Marc Webb’s remake of Snow White, which has not been met positively both critically and commercially.

Disney is in desperate need of a viable win, and here’s a movie that could very well give them one: a crowd-pleasing comedy that never takes itself too seriously and continues to dial-up the over-the-top slapstick to 100 instead of dialing it down. In short, it’s perfect viewing for kids who love to have fun and are looking for an easygoing, but mildly thrilling time at the movies. Better yet, Very Bad Road Trip also contains a positive message on life that children can easily digest, and parents will enjoy listening to.

Lemus and screenwriter Matt Lopez don’t reinvent the wheel of the road trip movie, nor should they. Very Bad Road Trip is exactly the film it’s supposed to be, presenting a dysfunctional family who must all put their differences aside as they embark on a vacation to Mexico, financed by Mother Val’s (Eva Longoria) magazine. Things aren’t going great for the Garcia family – husband Frank (Jesse Garcia) has just lost his dream restaurant, daughter Mia (Paulina Garcia) is waiting on a promposal from her crush that’s never arriving, and son Alexander (Thom Nemer) believes he’s cursed.

His belief isn’t entirely dumbfounded. As his grandfather Gilbert (Cheech Marin) tells him, their descendants stole an idol from powerful witches that has brought upon pain and suffering for the residents of Soledad, the small town their family is from. Lemus has fun depicting this story inside a black-and-white flashback sequence and even stages a kooky nightmare with staggeringly expressive greens and dynamic superimpositions.

It’s stuff like this that makes a movie of this stature feel alive, especially when family films have grown much staler as of late and do very little, particularly in the visual department, to tickle a child’s imagination and show the limitless potential of cinema to impressionable ages. Lemus doesn’t need to do much, too, to achieve this goal: he knows when to change the aspect ratio or employ different camera angles to slightly enthral and draw in smaller audiences to the adventure, before it even begins.

Because when it does, all hell breaks loose. Everything that goes wrong, goes wrong, and then some. Just when you think it couldn’t get anymore wrong, oh, it absolutely does, and then it gets even wronger, if that’s possible. Of course, when the movie introduces a high-tech RV filled with technology not even Tony Stark could dream of, you know that something’s bound to go wrong and that the movie is giving permission to Alexander (the one with a curse) to screw something up. When he does, Lemus and Lopez take it to the next level and add another layer that makes the sequence even crazier, because why not?

Some of it works wonders, notably in a scene where Alexander and Mia try to stop an ice cream truck from falling off a cliff, while other setpieces are hit or miss. Anything related to pageantry and the idol, acting as not only a recurring joke, but a reminder of the family’s curse? Great – and the film’s final joke, in relation to what they’ve just gone through, is extremely well-timed. An elongated setpiece involving a skunk? Nah. Without spoiling the punchline (which, of course, if you know the animal, you know it has a particular feature that repels people), it wasn’t funny, and it goes on for far too long.

Most of the extended setpieces overstay their welcome, but that’s part of the fun of a movie like this. The family goes through the wringer, and they go even further than that. However, Lemus also knows when to stop these zany sequences to give not only room to breathe for the audience but potent moments of character growth, as Alexander grows closer to his family, and so do his other family members. There’s also a storyline involving Cheech Marin’s Gilbert, who travels by motorcycle (as Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” plays during a scene) to join his family in Mexico.

While the character does get sidelined for a chunk of the brisk 94-minute runtime, a specific moment involving him and Grandmother Lidia (Rose Portillo) sees the actor at his most vulnerable and heartfelt, a side of him the actor has rarely shown on screen. It’s a brief scene, but one that gives Very Bad Road Trip a surprising dramatic center that Lemus ultimately explores with Alexander and his parents as they realize life is testing them and will continue to do so. What’s most important is how they will overcome the challenges this purported curse throws at them.

To be honest, it’s hard to surpass such a curse if it worsens the situations they’re in. That’s what they have to figure out how to ensure that it doesn’t affect them, and the only way they can do it is – you probably guessed it – together. With such a paint-by-numbers screenplay, a movie like this wouldn’t have worked if the chemistry between the family hadn’t been this rock-solid. Longoria and Garcia are hilarious as the parents (and Marin undoubtedly gets his time to shine, as mentioned above), but it’s Nemer who truly shines as the movie’s protagonist.

Not only does he have a great sense of comedic timing, but he lets his character’s worries open up naturally, so that we ultimately feel for him as the story progresses. Yes, it’s funny for us who’s watching these extreme slapstick situations at a distance, but it’s a nightmare for Alexander, who genuinely believes he and his family are victims of an age-old curse. Once you realize this, Very Bad Road Trip’s last few minutes hit like a punch in the gut. And it’s at that point where Lemus smartly spells out the message that was obvious from the moment the family stepped into that RV and genuinely went through all circles of Hell.

We can plan anything to the minute and believe we are in control of our lives, but when everything doesn’t go according to plan, what now? Do we wallow in self-pity and say to ourselves that we’re cursed because everything bad happens to us, or do we prepare ourselves for the inevitable curveballs of life and, in the meantime, try to make our dreams happen before it’s too late? If there’s anything that you should grasp out of such a simply-executed, but riotously amusing picture like Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip, it’s definitely that – and perhaps this will serve you as a lesson to retain for the rest of your time on this planet.

Such family entertainment with strong morals like these seldom happens anymore, especially ones that are as fun as this. Here’s hoping the next installment will be released on the big screen, provided we don’t have to wait another decade for it.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip is now available to stream globally on Disney Plus.

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