Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip (now streaming on Disney+) offers decent potential for a few laughs, but greater potential for death by exhaustion via movie title. Granted, it’s adopting such wordiness from Judith Viorst’s 1972 children’s picture-book classic Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, a chronicle of one poor kid’s string of lousy luck ranging from getting gum in his hair to seeing people kiss on TV – which was then adapted into a 2014 Disney movie in which Alexander contends with crocodile-based mishaps and nearly burns down his school, because the original depiction of bad luck just wasn’t EXTREME enough, it seems. The sort-of sequel to the movie, Road Trip, features an all-new set of characters, but essentially the same concept, and continues on the escalating-danger tack, altering the original idea for a doomed family vacation. Will the change of context be refreshing, or will it just offer the same old ridiculous slapstick? You probably know the answer to that already.

The Gist: Misfortune follows Alexander Garcia (Thom Nemer) around like a plague. If there’s a rock on the ground, he’ll trip on it. If he pets a friendly dog, it’ll turn on a dime and snap at him. If he gets  in a Cybertruck, it’ll fall apart while going down the road, and then spontaneously combust, killing everyone inside. We don’t see any of this – I’m just indulging some conjecture here. The first incident we do see puts Alexander in the passenger seat of a car his teenage sister Mia (Paulina Chavez) is driving, and she backs into a fire hydrant while scrolling on her phone. Now, I’ll address the screenplay directly: I’m not so sure about your lousy-luck work there, Lou. This particular incident doesn’t seem to be Alexander’s fault. Perhaps if he wasn’t present she wouldn’t have exercised bad judgment? How deep does this curse go? If Alexander flaps his arms doing the chicken dance, will it whip up a deadly typhoon in the Philippines? I have questions.

Anyhow. The film doesn’t bother with the discussion as to whether or not Alexander has been rejected medical and/or hazard insurance, and quickly gets to the plot: His mother Val (Eva Longoria) is a magazine travel writer whose latest assignment is to drive a state-of-the-art RV from their Denver home to Mexico City, which she’s turning into a family-vacay road trip. This vehicle is so massive, it’s like tilting the Burj Khalifa on its side and slapping a steering wheel in it. As they get ready to leave, dad Frank (Jesse Garcia), a chef, learns that the restaurant he works for is closing, but he keeps it secret so it doesn’t ruin the vacation, which tells us this little tidbit will undoubtedly ruin the vacation – if Alexander’s albatross doesn’t run it first, of course. They pack up Abuela Lidia (Rose Portillo), leave their brusque biker abuelo Gil (Cheech Marin) to watch the house and dog, and hit the road, with Mia fretting about “promposal week” and Alexander worrying about the ominous portent sure to befall them. 

I’m skipping something here, something that Alexander finds in the attic on the eve of their departure: an ancient jade idol that belonged to his grandfather’s grandfather. Legend has it, the idol gave the guy good luck for a while, but it turned to terrible, horrible, etc. luck after he refused to return it to the trio of witches to whom it belonged – and still apparently belongs. Alexander’s idea is to bring the idol along and return it to its rightful owners in Mexico, which seems logical enough, although the fallout is devastating: Mom crashes the rolling skyscraper forcing them to take a smelly old motorhome, a skunk douses them, they lose Grandma, they dangle an old ice cream truck over the edge of a cliff, etc. NO SPOILERS, but it seems the only escape from the curse is the sweet, sweet release of death.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This is a lot like the 2014 Alexander in tone, style and forgettableness, but mixed with that dumbass Robin Williams comedy RV, which I’m loath to invoke.

Performance Worth Watching: People of my generation and older have got to be shaking their heads when they see Cheech Marin in Disney kiddie movies.

Memorable Dialogue: Mia bellows a question to the fates in the heavens: “How much worse could a day possibly get?”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip inevitably – INEVITABLY, I says – leads us to ponder the nature of luck itself. Some folks tout that they can “create” good luck by being prepared, thus allowing them to more easily absorb and overcome mishaps. By that token, bad luck is an extension of underpreparedness, or more accurately, bad judgment. Make smart decisions, and you’ll minimize the effects of misfortune. Example: You wouldn’t drive a car without a spare tire, right? If you get a flat and end up on the side of the road, you quickly replace the wheel and you’re back on your way. If you lack foresight and forgo the spare, your repair takes more time and opens up greater possibilities of misfortune, like, say, being so late for work you get fired, or amplifying the risk of being hit by passing traffic.

I know. This is a thoroughly boring and adult way of deconstructing a goofy kid flick. And it might all be moot, but to say the Garcia family exercises good judgment throughout the movie would be a blatant lie. Not that it’s really their fault – the screenwriter gods assure that none of their characters listens or communicates effectively, which is key to their snowballing misfortune. The only understandable bad decision made here comes via Frank, who insists silly curses attached to old artifacts is a bunch of bunk-ass hooey, a totally reasonable assertion in real life. But this being a movie, the curse is inevitably true, which leads one to believe that Frank should better understand the ridiculous context of his existence and therefore believe in outright nonsense.

And so we have to suffer through a mishmash of belief and disbelief before the whole of the Garcia clan comes around to the truth, but not before everyone ends up lightly injured (in spite of the extremity of the circumstances), disheveled, wearing novelty gas-station T-shirts and smelling like skunkbutt. Reader, I didn’t laugh at a single one of these hacky jokes or slapsticky situations. And Viorst’s original idea – a story in which a kid learns to roll with the punches during a day in which things don’t go his way – has become a violent, exaggerated collection of very loud and obnoxious things happening that may at best function as forgettable entertainment for grade-school-age audiences. Oh, there’s also some stuff about the Garcia family rediscovering its Mexican heritage, which is not nothing, although it comes shockingly close to being nothing, and produces a watery joke at the expense of Chipotle. And a big Americanized burrito is quite the instance of symbolic irony, coming from a movie that strays so far from the charm of its source material, the original sentiment is all but unrecognizable.

Our Call: Your mileage may vary on this Road Trip. Some of you will find it just fine, but considering the overabundance of smarter, funnier options for family viewing in the streaming landscape, I gotta say SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.