‘The Brady Bunch Movie’ Now Packs Twice The Nostalgia

If you haven’t watched The Brady Bunch Movie in a while, you might be surprised to hear that the film is just as grungy as it groovy. It tends to take around 20 years for pop culture to hit a nostalgia peak, which is why this 1995 movie satirizing a sitcom that ended in 1974 plays on multiple levels in 2017. Twenty-two years after its release, every second of the film now hits a nostalgic nerve for two different—and distinct—eras. The Brady Bunch Movie has aged like a fine wine (or, more appropriately, a fine Tang or Jolt Cola).

The Brady Bunch Movie was already bizarre when it hit theaters in 1995. Instead of updating the sitcom it’s based on, the movie treats the Bradys as bizarre anachronisms in mid-’90s Los Angeles, a family of polyester-clad time-travelers blissfully unaware that the world has changed around them. There are no justifications. Did the Bradys become unmoored in time? Are they escapees from a retro cult that shunned the modern world? Does the family perceive the world differently through some sort of extra-dimesional sight? You can ask these questions, but you will get no answers. The film is built on this clash of culture, as the sugary sweet ’70s gets carjacked by the grimly sarcastic ’90s. For viewers that grew up in the ’90s, though, the “modern” scenes play just as hilariously over-the-top as the ’70s ones.

The ’90s are depicted as a hell-scape populated by extras from the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video and guarded by metal detectors. Similar to how The Brady Bunch exaggerated the flower power vibes of its era, The Brady Bunch Movie turns the apathetic Gen X cool of Reality Bites and Empire Records up to eleven. The Bradys hold potato sack races in their backyard while their neighbors worry about getting bulldozed to make room for a “residential mini-mall.” When Greg (Christopher Daniel Barnes) and Marcia (Christine Taylor) come face to face with a carjacker, they assume he has a flat tire and then nonchalantly drive away.

Well over half of The Brady Bunch Movie takes place at Westdale High School. If you told me that The Brady Bunch Movie was a Marvel-style big screen crossover with a ’90s Fox teen drama, I would totally believe you—that is, if I hadn’t actually lived through the ’90s, keenly aware of the teen drama landscape. But seriously, the teens in this movie look like they were pulled from MTV’s My So-Called 90210, complete with the required belly shirts, pigtails, Kurt Cobain hair, and pre-swing-revival Gap look.

Like any good piece of nostalgia-based entertainment, the ’90s style of The Brady Bunch Movie makes you hang your head and mutter to yourself, “Dear god, all of this is back in fashion.” The high-waisted jeans, the midriffs, the necklaces, you can find all of that at a Forever 21. Just like the off-putting resurgence of bellbottoms and polyester in the ’90s, everything old is eventually new again. The Brady Bunch Movie calls that out at one point, when a flock of modern groovy chicks swarm Greg “Johnny Bravo” Brady.

You can tell this scene is from the ’90s because of the high school lighting up in the background. Edgy.

I don’t want to undersell just how much grunge is in this movie. The film starts with guitar-heavy alt-rock blasting while we see modern Los Angeles, a wasteland of oversized cell phones and traffic. A kid that looks like a member of Soul Asylum says Marcia is “harder to get into than a Pearl Jam concert.” Hand-me-down grunge is piped through the PA system in the high school, and it’s one of two genres played on radio in LA (the other is, of course, the all Davy Jones station). The mid ’90s are summed up by the original Greg Brady himself Barry Williams, who appears in the film as the head of Toe Jam Records.

True to the ’90s, The Brady Bunch Movie is also jam-packed with issues. The movie contrasts the kind of problems the Bradys had on their show (being a tattletale, wearing glasses, getting hit in the face with a football) with the kind of problems teens had on ’90s shows faced (teen pregnancy, bulimia, suicidal tendencies, and even paranoid schizophrenia). Jan Brady (Jennifer Elise Cox) spends the entire movie hearing voices in her head telling her to knock over a 7-Eleven, and she seeks guidance from a very special source: a pre-VH1 talk show RuPaul.

Jan’s session with guidance counselor Cummings even ends with a direct to-camera “You better work.” Cue: “Supermodel (You Better Work)”

You better believe that’s not the only ’90s cameo in this movie, either! In addition to cameos from the original Brady cast and the 3/4ths of the Monkees (Michael Nesmith had better things to do), the movie has a few cameos that also date this as a very ’90s movie. The film’s big bad is a fresh off of Saturday Night Live Michael McKean.

Empty Nest’s David Leisure (you know, wacky neighbor Charley) pops up as what looks like a leather daddy Kurt Russell.

If you thought The Brady Bunch Movie didn’t have Fresh Prince’s James Avery, think again!

And you can’t have a ’90s comedy without at least one Designing Woman—in this case it’s Jean Smart.

The award for Most ’90s-iest Cameo has to go to Real World alum and former host of MTV’s The Grind, Eric Nies.

Nothing takes you back to the first Bush presidency quite like seeing a Real World: New York alum.

Over and over again, The Brady Bunch Movie hits ’90s nostalgia buttons, buttons that definitely weren’t there back in 1995. At that time, grunge still topped the charts and you could see James Avery every week on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Now that we’re a few decades removed, the film is filled with a ton of “Oh, wow, remember how that was a thing?” moments. Oversized cell phones, horizontal stripes, car hydraulics, home camcorders, massage chairs—all of these things stand out just as much as the Bradys’ kitschy knickknacks.

The Brady Bunch Movie vacates Hulu on June 30th, so make sure you check out this double decker of nostalgia before it goes the way of grunge.

Photos: Hulu

Where to watch The Brady Bunch Movie