HELL'S HIGHWAY

REVIEWED - ARE WE THERE YET?: Welcome to the world of show business young Philip Daniel Bolden. Libel laws prohibit me from suggesting that this child actor has no talent whatsoever (so I don't), but let us just say that the contrast between Master Bolden's abilities and those of the legions of nauseatingly gifted little tykes that the cinema throws at us weekly is marked.

It takes a special gift for random enunciation to render even monosyllabic lines - Yes, No, Stop - entirely meaningless, but this wee lad manages the task quite brilliantly. Hail the anti-Dakota Fanning!

All of which is a way of avoiding having to talk in too much depth about the blood-chillingly dreadful Are We There Yet? Suffice to say that this alleged comedy, in which irresponsible rake Ice Cube has to drive his girlfriend's children to Vancouver (because it's cheaper to shoot film there), manages the seemingly impossible task of being the worst film yet by the director of Snow Dogs, The Flintstones, Jingle All the Way and Beethoven.

In the same way that those sections of 2001: A Space Odyssey that address the boredom of space travel occasionally become boring in themselves, long sequences of this wretched film are as sickening, irritating, cacophonous and tedious as being trapped in a small car with somebody else's children and an angry malcontent.

Mind you, we do get to enjoy Ice Cube - who, to be fair, is as winning as ever - riding an actual horse. I am fairly sure this is the first time we have seen any former member of NWA thus transported.