A Very Brady Christmas (1988) ** (out of 4) Instead of going on a vacation to Greece, Carol and Mike Brady (Florence Henderson, Robert Reed) decide to instead invite the six kids and their families to a Christmas dinner. What the parents don't fully know is that all six are facing certain issues that will come out over the holiday. A VERY BRADY Christmas is a pretty silly and pretty stupid little picture but fans of the original TV show should still find it entertaining. I remember watching the show as a kid and enjoying it even though it certainly didn't represent any sort of real life that I knew. This film once again offers up the basic idea of the series, which is that everyone faces a problem but at the end the father will give a speech that makes everyone see things the correct way. I think the biggest thing working against the movie is that they just have so much to do in such little time and this makes for some pacing issues. We basically see Mike and Carol. We then are introduced to the six kids and their problems. Everyone comes together and one by one the problems are solved. There's certainly nothing ground-breaking here but it was still a fun way to get the original cast members to return (with the exception of Cindy) and fans should enjoy seeing them together. Both Henderson and Reed haven't missed a beat in their parts and the kids all do fine as well. Ann B. Davis, on the other hand, is pretty annoying here but this is certainly the fault of the screenplay more than anything else. A VERY BRADY Christmas isn't good enough to watch on a regular basis but it's still got enough bad charm that makes it worth watching just to see the cast members back in action.

This is just awful crap, and it's a testament to the last 30 years of the decline in American artistic taste that people have actually written in to say how much they like it and want to buy it on DVD. God, this thing is dripping in so much schmaltz and rotten jokes it defies the law of averages. But the awful writing is outpaced by the acting. Leading the pack is Jerry Houser, who just might be the worst actor God ever put on the face of the earth. He's simply execrable. His performance makes my teeth grind involuntarily. Or how about when Alice returns and says that her butcher hubby Sam left her for another woman, and it happened after he volunteered to "come over and check her rump roast." Ye Gods!! The usual awful Brady stuff is in place, and Cindy Olsen dodged a huge bullet with this one. Somebody posted a comment that she wasn't in the show because she was getting married in real life. I thought it was because they wouldn't offer her enough money. I'm sure if she'd wanted to be in this terrible film, they would have adjusted the schedule ever so slightly if she was getting hitched. Maybe Cindy wanted more money, but a million dollars wouldn't have been enough to warrant doing it. The guy playing Jan's husband is a real loser too. And how about the scene when Dr. Greg Brady and his nurse-wife go all gooey on each other, making stupid medical (bad) double entendres. I think you can see Robert Reed's AIDS starting to affect him, too, which is really sad. Watching any Brady show is like watching a train wreck, and in that this made-for-TV film surely measures up. People always laughed and said the creators did it this way on purpose: well, that ain't anything to be proud of. Can we somehow destroy all the prints of this embarrassment?

This is a movie that is really only going to be tolerated by true "Brady" fans. We never really took them seriously as a family, but we loved watching them. The Brady's are, in deed, a non-existent family, but that makes them even more fun to watch- Escapism !!And now, the whole family (minus the original Cindy) is back together again in a less-groovy, updated surroundings, for a Christmas gathering, in Brady fashion. The whole house is full of Brady's and more Brady's (they've multiplied). Alice doesn't live here anymore, but she's got problems of her own and shows up at just the right moment- to help with Christmas dinner.A Very Brady Christmas is less than average t.v. fare if you were not a Brady fan. To those who watched faithfully every Friday night, you're gonna love seeing 'em in all their unbelievable camp, once again.

OK, I will agree some of the dialogue and situations in this movie are VERY corny. But it's also warm and winning as the Bradys reunite for the holidays. Some of the situations here were continued in the series The Bradys, which followed a year later. Sadly, Susan Olsen wasn't in the film (was on her honeymoon at the time), but the rest of the family is back! A nice little film to enjoy come holiday season. A bit of trivia: Tonya Lee Williams, who plays Cindy's roommate here, went on to play Olivia on the Young and the Restless, a role she's played for the last decade.