The family fodder films which Problem Child set out to satirise featured both the adults and the children making moves towards a common ground, with both of them emotionally evolving along the way.
The viewer, much like the Healy family, knows that Junior’s journey has been harrowing, so it comes down to us to find sympathy rather than having it prompted by a shift in his behaviour.Īnd perhaps that’s the root of all Junior’s problems.
In fact Universal’s chairman Tom Pollock claimed it was its most profitable film of the year.Īlthough you shouldn’t pick a favourite, while Home Alone’s Kevin McCallister slowly grows to miss, appreciate and be more patient with his family, Michael Oliver’s Junior doesn’t even dial down his disobedience. Whereas Problem Child was scalded by critics, Universal and its own writers, its performance at the box office seemed to suggest that the reshoots and rethinks were all worth it, with $72 million made worldwide against a production budget of $10 million. Would Kevin McCallister ever have dared? Would he have had the core strength? Doubtful. One version of the poster also directly sent up 1989’s Parenthood, true to the original satiric vision, with Junior hanging his adopted parents upside down instead of Steve Martin’s character doing the same thing to his onscreen kids.
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It seems even Universal thought a full five stars might have come across as too keen. The ad campaign included ‘reviews’ from a whole host of famous film nefarios including Darth Vader, Bart Simpson and Al Capone, who declared the film to be ‘Four-star fun for the whole gang!’ Problem Child’s anarchic attitude didn’t just stay on the screen though as the promotion for the film also walked a fine line between being ingenious and idiotic. In fact, Alexander and Karaszewski were so eager to distance themselves from the film afterwards that they would shy away from talking about it when pitching for other projects (although they did return to quickly pen the sequel). Scott Alexander admitted on Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast that he cried after watching the cast and crew screening because he and everyone else thought it was simply terrible. Over the course of a round of reshoots (or 11, as the writers later joked) Problem Child was remoulded in the same image of the films that it originally sought to poke fun at, much to the chagrin of everyone involved. That it was their “wounded soldier” that it’d have to leave behind on the battlefield. Universal, however, developed different ideas during a difficult production when it started to believe that Problem Child would never break even. Dialling down the scares somewhat, Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander pitched the idea as a dark comedy, satirising the slew of child-oriented films of the late 1980s ( Uncle Buck, Three Men And A Baby and Look Who’s Talking et al) where children inadvertently teach adults invaluable life lessons though unlikely encounters. With Tommy setting fires, praying to Satan and mutilating the family dog it’s no surprise that many writers were trying to pitch the same idea as a horror in a similar vein to The Omen. Tommy terrorised his adoptive parents and was still sending death threats to them, long after he’d been committed to an institution. Problem Child was inspired by the LA Times article and real-life story An Adopted Boy–and Terror Begins about the desperate parents who felt fooled into adopting a child called Tommy, a “dangerous sociopath”. Also, it was much, much darker than Home Alone: see Junior’s potential pillow smothering, kitchen conjugal visits and a mass murderer who makes the Wet Bandits seem… wet.īut the film started out as something much, much different. The put-upon cat with plaster casts on his legs, nuns being fired out of rubbish chutes and the red devil suit that Junior wears, for instance. Turning 30 years old in May, it’s aged okay and still has some genuine good times to give us. Try three issues of Film Stories magazine – for just £4.99: right here!įirst of all, it needs to be said that despite the name, Problem Child is far from full of problems.