User Reviews

Junior is the 8-year-old star of "Problem Child," an attempted black comedy that doesn't quite succeed. He sets things on fire, throws cats and causes havoc wherever he goes. The film tries to find it's humour from Junior's chaos, but none of it is funny. Everything he does is criminal, and it is implausible to laugh at it. Add an unmemorable cast of dummies, a strange subplot involving a serial killer wearing a bow tie and you have a comedy that is supposed to be for kids?

It's about Ben Healey (John Ritter) and his self-centred wife (Flo) who discover that they can't have kids. Deciding to adopt, they get conned into adopting Junior (Michael Oliver), who is the devil incarnate. Civil Servant, Igor Peabody (Gilbert Gottfried) tricks them because the nuns at the orphanage where Junior lives, threaten to leave if he does not get the boot. Junior begins to turn Ben's world upside with one disaster after another, and when he discovers he can't take him back to the orphanage, he must deal with the little bundle of joy.

Michael Oliver doesn't leave much of an impression as Junior. He's destructive, and we never learn why, but he is not the worst in the movie. It's the razor-thin story that feels stitched together through a series of dumb and unfunny misadventures. It tries to balance the dark and gritty themes, which would have made it a black comedy, but due to the PG rating, it doesn't do so successfully. Junior whizzes on a campfire to add crude content to the mix and leads a bear to a campsite, but every attempt at humour gets thwarted by someone stupid. In the case of the bear, it's Ben's neighbour Roy the "Superdad" who laughs like Krusty, the Clown and is an ignorant jackass.

The movie would have to open with a baby whizzing in someone's face before the opening credits roll, which has Junior going from foster home to foster home in a wicker basket due to his behaviour as he gets older. He throws a rattle through a window, terrorizes a cat and bulldozes a trailer after he gets his toy trucks stepped on. Shortly after, he gets put into the orphanage where he drives the head nun crazy. Does any of this sound funny? Junior comes off as more of a sociopath than anything. Some of his pranks are harmless like him throwing a meat log on the ceiling and the nun looking up, and it drops on her face. Other's are either violent or menacing. There is a scene later in the film where he beats the hell out of a little league team with a baseball bat simply because they make fun of him. Another sequence has him causing chaos at a snobby and nasty little girl's birthday party, where he wrecks everything.

Most of Junior's torment is towards the nuns at the orphanage. The head nun seems to get it the worst. He says a sarcastic comment to her, and she storms down the hallway after him, and he kicks over a bucket of water that launches her down the hall and into a garbage bin. Eventually, the nuns have had enough, and they demand Igor Peabody to remove him. Yes, it's the guy with the annoying laugh. He easily manipulates subordinates Ben and Flo, who is equally annoying as Ben's shallow wife. The whole reason Flo wants a kid is so she can attend the neighbourhood kid's birthday parties and act as like a superficial idiot to the parents.

When they adopt Junior and bring him home, his room gets set on fire, and he launches the family cat at Ben's dad, Big Ben Healey, played by Jack Warden. Big Ben is a jackass and ignorant sportings good store owner who doesn't think much of his son. Big Ben getting a cat thrown on him and falling down the stairs is supposed to be funny? The jokes are lame and could have been better. Eventually, Ben wants to get rid of Junior but has a change of heart when he discovers the history behind the kid at the orphanage much to his shock. He decides to keep him only for Junior to drive his car, with Ben on the hood, right into Big Ben's Sporting goods store. Okay, maybe this was a bit of a giggle. I will say the only good thing with this movie is John Ritter. He is a great actor, and Michael Oliver has potential, but I wouldn't count on it.

Where the film falls off the rails is the strangest aspect of the story. It's a major subplot involving a notorious serial killer who wears a bow tie. When Junior sees him on the T.V., he takes a cabbage patch doll with a bow tie and puts it on himself to emulate the "Bow Tie Killer." Are the filmmakers saying something here? Michael Richards plays the serial killer and is terrible as he tries to make the character more dangerous by being expressionless. Junior becomes pen pals with him, and he mistakes the letters from J.R. as a deranged convict who is crazy and getting paroled. Funny how the serial killer has never met J.R. and says, "he is crazier than I am." It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Even more so, he breaks out of prison to go and find Junior, thus leading to a subplot that attempts to make the film gritty.

I'm not surprised this movie is marketed towards kids when it is far from a kid's movie. The adult themes make this a borderline R rated comedy and somehow, it has a PG rating. Even when Big Ben moons a television camera, it's not pleasant. The fact that it stars an eight-year-old kid, I'm sure, is the reason it got a PG rating. The story is lame, the characters are forgettable, and the laughs are a misfire. You can bet there is going to be a "Problem Child 2" but don't hold your breath about it being better.

Calling this family comedy directed by Dennis Dugan a little rambunctious is an understatement. It has a lot of notorious edgier things that wouldn't fly pass with today's mostly tame political correctness family audiences. Yet back then, seeing Ben Healy (John Ritter) and his social climbing wife Flo (Amy Yasbeck) go through hell when they adopted a trouble maker seven years old kid, Junior (Michael Oliver) who turns a camping trip, birthday party and even a baseball game into comedic nightmares was somewhat entertaining to watch. While there were some protestors naming a group called 'In Defense of Animals' that had a problem with the film poster showing a cat in a tumble dryer, implicating the child put it there. The film still mostly got away with PG rating in theaters despite a lot of mean spirited and raunchy humor to the point that it gross $72.2 million worldwide against a production budget of $10 million at the box office. As for television released, the content was cut apart by network censors due to its insensitive for adoption. The only good thing to come out of that was the fact that deleted scenes were used to pad up the running time, creating new versions of the movie that as of this writing has not yet been released on DVD. Nevertheless, it wasn't until the film came to home video that the flick finally received somewhat of a cult status. That's where I manage to go see it. As a kid, I love this movie. Nevertheless, after rewatching the film as an adult. I have to agree with some of the PC friendly audience members. Certain jokes have not really aged well. Call it subjective, but the animal abuse and some of the sex humor does worry me a little bit. However, the disturbing subplot of Junior admiring the bow tie serial killer Martin Beck played by Michael Richards bugs me the most. If this movie was a little more serious. I wouldn't really mind this father figure conflict, as it could be compelling to see if Junior follows Martin into a life of crime or does Ben save Junior from the wrong path similar in the way 1993 film 'A Bronx Tale' played out. However, since the conflict is portrayed as over the top comedy. The results of the third act weren't as impactful as it could had been, especially when Big Ben (Jack Warden)'s campaign for mayorship was not intermixed well. Regardless, I still found humor in the film like certain juvenile music montage sequences such as the rock band George Thorogood and the Destroyers' 'Bad to the Bone' opening riffs and 1960s singer Lesley Gore 'It's my birthday cry if I want to' scene even with me getting up in mature years. Yet I do understand those don't like the film as a whole. The kid is indeed annoying, but if you watch the movie closely, you can clearly see that he's not doing all these heinous acts because he's evil. Instead he doing it to get back to those that mistreated him when he's trying to be good. The film leads heavily on the nurture vs natural side which I kinda like. Another thing that I love is John Ritter. That actor truly is a treasure. He can play any humble pleasant fictional person in the world and make the individual seen believable real unlike the loud mouth cameo of Gilbert Gottfried as Mr. Peabody from the adoption agency that seem really fake. Ben is the only person worth rooting. Ritter doesn't get enough credit for being the glue that held all the pieces of this film together. Without him this movie would had fallen apart. Regardless, the flick was followed by two sequels: 1991 'Problem Child 2' and 'Problem Child 3: Junior in Love' which aired on NBC television in 1995. Along with an animated TV series that aired in 1993. Overall: While this movie received overwhelmingly negative reviews during its theatrical release. It's nowhere near the worst Dennis Dugan's movie. That honor goes to 2011 awful trashy comedy 'Jack and Jill'. In the end, this motion picture is not so bad. It's just misunderstood. This is one problem worth solving.

Junior is hardly a model child. Mean-spirited and impudent.

He is adopted by a loving man along with his obnoxious wife named Ben and Flo Healy. Ever since Junior comes into their lives, he turns ordinary days into full-scale nightmares.

He also leaves a path of serious destruction in his wake, and is even pen pals with The Bow Tie Killer, a notorious serial killer who kidnaps his faithful correspondent, along with Flo.

It's up to Ben as he undertakes a rescue mission to get Junior back from Beck before he plans on hurting him.

For a film that's directed by Dennis Dugan, made so soon after Home Alone, and under an hour and twenty minutes, its not too bad.

It's full of clichés and troupes, and there's no prizes for guessing how the finale will conclude, but it does its job like a McDonalds would, fills you full of garbage and hits the spot for a while, until self realisation kicks in.

Ritter carries the film, and really puts his all into the doting dad, sometimes too much. The same cannot be said for the child members of the cast. Oliver aside, the rest of the kids are awful, as if they have been picked up from the street and just told to say what they do.

Set pieces are okay, it's still amusing in a guilty way, and my daughter loved it, just like I did when I was thirteen.