The Worst Idea Of All Time - Diggin Dennis Dugan: Problem Child

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

The time is now to visit (in many ways) the origin point of the entire 15 year Worst Idea project. Dennis Dugan’s directorial debut is Problem Child - a 1990 movie which itself is fairly problematic. Beyond the liberal use of the R word and a B-plot involving a serial killer (played by Michael Richards - famously the only unproblematic figure in comedy) being the 8-year-old protagonist’s hero, this movie just plain seems to hate human beings. On the other hand, it is the genesis of the Vibes-based cinema system pioneered by Dugan and perfected by Sandler. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tim here, if you want to see me in the flesh and you're in New Zealand or Australia, good news. I'm coming to Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington for the comedy festivals. Please buy some tickets now at timbat.com.com. What do you reckon? Yeah, I reckon the time is now. The time is now. What a nice way to start. I feel like we need a standardised intro to this.

What do you think about that? The time is now. The time is now. Because there is no truest statement. There is no true a statement. There is no true a statement. The time is now. And it's versatile.

Everyone, check your watches. That's right. I thought you'd notice this. The time is now. Here we are. Here we are. The time is now. Here we are.

Yeah. And both... We're inside of the sandlerverse. Yeah, both in arguable. What are we calling it? The sandler system. We're in our rocket ship. Yes.

Sailing past all sorts of different planets, black holes, collapsing stars. Really, I don't know that you necessarily say enjoying ourselves expressly, but I would say, you know, satisfying curiosities, scratching itches, learning. This is the thing about space exploration. It's not all fun in games. It's actually in the spirit of exploration itself and learning and figuring things out. Neil Armstrong didn't go, oh, when asked by a journalist, why are you going to the moon,

He didn't say for shits and giggles. I mean, he said in the spirit of human endeavor, all words to that effect. I'm sure, and I'm sure, look, beneath the surface, everybody knew, yeah, you're feeling pretty lucky about this one, Neil. But what we don't see, what is not reported on, what was not on the headline when he walked on the moon was astronaut who spent 15 years training, you know, walks on moon. It's just man walks on moon. Yeah, it is a bad headline.

It's a shit headline. And so this brings us to why we watched problem. 1990s Dennis Dugan directorial debut That's right Starring John Rissa RIPC Amy Yaspick

And she was Flo She was Flo Also featuring some Cameos or more Bigger than cameos Featured featured guest appearances From Gilbert Gottfried

One of the single greatest things You can see In an opening sequence Of the film's credits Is And Gilbert Godfrey Michael Richards

pre or, in my estimation, simultaneous to Seinfeld. Yes, so I googled this specifically, and I know we're chatting through here, but Seinfeld 89, this movie, 1990. I know. They must have kind of, he shot it. I think he shot it prior to Seinfeld. But then Seinfeld came out prior to a problem child. For those unaware, this is Kramer.

So this movie came out between Seinfeld's five episodes, season one order, and a more substantial, I can't remember like 20-something, season two. Yeah, he plays the bow-tie killer. A much maligned movie, 3% on Rotten Tomatoes, as advertised in our previous conversation.

The Critics Consensus, mean-spirited and hopelessly short on comic convention. Problem Childs are particularly unpleasant comedy, one that's loaded with manic scenery chewing and juvenile pranks. Now, I totally agree with that. I haven't read any of the reviews,

but I agree. Can I just say why we're talking about credits? And I was going to get to this later because it's in the end credits but while you're going through people in the end credits it kicks off with incredible prominence for actor Peter Jurassic

did you notice that is it featuring Peter Jurassic and holds it on screen for ages he plays a character named Roy who like I mean he's in the movie but it's not that important and I'm like who's this guy who is his agent

who has managed to get this incredible screen time for his own name This was not a straightforward production. This movie involved significant rewrites and reshoots. It had a very poor test screening. It was pitched as a black comedy that was a satire of the sort of three men and a baby style films of its era. And the studio forced their hand into turning it into a family romp, which is why the tone can feel somewhat disjointed and unclear. This has got shades of the Scooby-Doo.

reboot to me. The writers, upon watching the cast and crew screening, one of the writers was in tears at how poor the movie that they'd made turned out to be. However, it was a surprise box office hit for Universal. It was one of their better films of the year. I think it brought in overall $56 million at the box office, which I can't adjust for inflation.

Budget of something like five or six or seven? It was Dennis Dugan's directorial debut. He has a cameo as a show. sort of loving dad at a sportswear store. I thought he was very good. Did you? I thought he was a scene stealer. I suppose we've got to think about how we want to attack this because I have, since watching

it sort of dug into various different bits and pieces. Right. But just as a bit of colour commentary for you, Tim, that you won't have access to. I, we do Sunday night, so we do Sunday night cinema at home. We have a screen ban. My stepdaughter, Oliver's 10, and we don't watch television during the school week, but every Sunday night, we do Sunday night cinema, we watch a movie. Beautiful.

And the most recent Sunday night cinema selection was we got it from a book. It's quite fun. It's called Hey Kids Watch This. And it's like an A24, I think, help publish it, but it's a curated list of like kids movies that ushers through different genres, different ages. It's sort of like a great place to defer to if you're like, oh, I wonder what we should watch as a family. It features some, I would say, you know, average movies.

we watched Flubber on his recommendation Flubber is dead in the water I reckon that movie's no good Flubber no good I saw Flubber at the cinema I did too didn't remember it I mean never

Pivy Longstock The New Adventures of Pivy Longstockings was featured in this book We watched that 1988 And Dennis Dugan has quite a featured acting role in that As the name

Like so Piby Longstocking Get separated from her Pirate Dad at the High Seas Watches up to this I can't remember that I'm so poor with details, but he's always like, go to this house. It's like Cape Canaanuka or whatever. She goes up at the house and there's some

neighbors with like a well-to-do, mum and dad, and two sort of, like, well-heeled, but rambunctious, spirited young kids who become friends with Pippi Longstocking. So Dennis Dugan is acting the whole time as like their kind of put upon traditional values dad. Who's like, I don't like that Pippi Longstockings. And you know, I want you kids home by curfew and all that kind of stuff.

How old is Dennis Dugan? Hard to say. So that's him acting in 88. Yeah, he's directed a couple of episodes of TV at this point. This movie longstock movie was a mess, but in a very curious way. Not altogether poor, not altogether interesting, but like... We also haven't mentioned this. The reason we're watching this is Dennis Dugan directed grown-ups and grown-ups too.

And I've got a great piece of data on his relationship with Adam Sandler and just how they started collaborating together to share with you on that as well. Great. But if Dennis Dugan learned any letters, any lessons rather, from... the new Adventures Pippi Longstocking. I believe that they would more or less be that anything can be a movie if you finish and say it's a movie. That's how you feel about Pippi Longstockings? That's how I feel about, I mean, there's some great songs in it. There's some fun set pieces, but that's how I feel about it.

I've not revisited it since I was a child, but it was an incredible and important part of my childhood because my sister was obsessed with it. And a sister that we call her Pippi Longstocks. Yeah, of course. And there were myriad books and other versions of the movie. Like this was a sort of an Americanized... I think we were grasping in the dark for female protagonists at that time for children's movies and TV shows. You know, Piby's so strong she can lift a horse.

Yeah. Which is not to be sniffed at. Anyhow, Dennis Dugan arrives at the director's table as part of his pitch to direct this movie because he wasn't recognized as a film director. He was in the president of Universal's... I like how you put that. He was in the president of Universal's room pitching for the movie. And as a spur of the moment, he said... stood up on the coffee table in the room.

He said, you see this? This is what you want. This is chaos. This is crazy. This is what you want, referring to his directing problem child. Three hours later, he gets a phone call saying, congratulations. You sit on the table. You got the job.

And, yeah, so he got the job. He campaigned for John Ritter. He really wanted John Ritter. The studio wanted more of a movie star. He said, no, it's got to be John. Went out to John before he had approval from the studio and then sent John the script. John loved it. in the next day this year

he said, hey, actually, we've been thinking about it, you reckon you can get a hold of John? Lovely story. You know, the guy who plays...

Do you know if this was John Ritter's first sort of big outing in a movie or anything like that? I think he was famous for Three's company at the time. I think this is his sort of feature kind of, yeah, he actually also a fun little side detail. We haven't even set up what the premise of the movie is.

Doesn't matter. They're not important. John Ritter and Amy Yaspek play a married couple who can't conceive and so they are forced to adopt a child who turns out to be a terror is the basic premise. Amy Yaspik is the flow,

who plays the woman, they fell in love on set and later got married. Really? Yeah, they met at the read-through. I love that. It's quite a sweet story. That's really nice.

Yeah. But so... Whoa! Light down. Don't worry about that. I'm not. I'll fix it. Yeah, yeah.

Keep talking. Well, I've got a piece of gum. I've got to get it. It's been driving crazy. That's better. We could even just cut this part of the comment. conversation out if you want to. This is all part of it. The people have a right to know. Tim's amended the lighting issue by lowering the height of the tripod, which seems incredibly

sensible. I've changed it at centre of gravity. You want to know the other really risky business component of this studio? As ever, it remains the unfastened plant tower. Which our microphones are affixed. That's right. But so, yeah, so Dennis Dugan's at the helm. He's got these two guys. Also, this is a further testament to Dennis Dugan. And kind of, I think, helps paint a broader picture about his collaboration with Adam Sandler, perhaps how they work and the kind of guys they are. He really wanted, so as also central to the premise, is John Ritter's character is the heir, air apparent to a, like a sporting goods.

Big Bill's, Sports Town? Big Ben's. Sports City? Yeah. Protot Kmart, as I wrote in my notes, which we'll get into it later. Lovely stuff. So he plays Ben. His dad is Big Ben Sports Town.

Yeah. Played by Jack Warden, who I believe is a two-time Oscar nominee. Ugliest man I've ever seen on a movie. Dennis Dugan wanted him to play that role so badly. He pitched it to him and he said, no, thank you. And then he offered him half of his points. Jesus. He said, I'll give you half my back-end points on the movie if you do it.

Dennis Dugan is operating in an absolutely crazy way. This is cool. This is his chance. This is his debut. feature so he's pulling out all the stops he came to make the movie he wants to make. John Redder or I walk. Yeah. Stay and I'll give you half my profit share on his plate.

So Jack Warden, the actor, said, was so moved by the gesture. Yeah. He said, yes. I'm so moved by this promise of financial. Rejected the points. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, but said, I'm going to do the movie because you clearly believe in it. That's fucking classy.

That's so classy, isn't it? Jack Warden, to me, seemed like he's had some stories. film career that I don't know about. That's what his face read to me. Yeah, absolutely. He's got that. So, so here's the interesting thing. So.

I'm all he is. This is sort of, I think, helpful. Here's one I wrote recently. You know what they say about thin hair? What? Thick skin. You know what they say about no hair? What?

More skin. Same skin, just more on display. Anyhow. So Dennis Duke, this is like testament to what a guy, Dennis too. is and how he wants to operate and how he works. So he gets it over the line. Anyway, later on, during the casting process for an unsuccessful movie called Brain Donors, which was a John Tituro-led 1992 film that was a massive flop.

Dugan pitched for Adam Sandler to be in the movie on four separate occasions. Of brain? For this film, Brain Donors. Brain Donors. And was rejected every time. The producers just weren't interested. So then I think three or four years later, happy Gilmore was on the slate and producers were looking for a director.

Dugan found out late in the piece So I only had a night to read the script And prepare his notes Prepared like 10 pages of notes For his pitch And as soon as he walked into the meeting And saw Sandler This is how Adam Sandler operates

He said, you And Dennis Stone goes, you And Adam Sandler said, You stuck up for me So you're doing the movie Dugan never had to pitch Literally Adam Sandler Operating on vibes

Was like this guy tried to get me Into a movie four times He's directing this film This is why we're in the spaceship. This is, dude, this is literally why we're here. This is incredible. I really didn't want to watch this movie, and I also hated this movie.

But learning about the genesis of Dennis Dugan, which is the genesis of Sandler in a lot of ways, Sandler in a lot of ways, which is the reason we're here today. It's so heartwarming to hear that this is a foundation built on loyalty and putting your neck out for people. I think, but yeah, but I think equally important in underscoring this is no, like a lack of visible work or, like, you know,

vibes, the vibes based system, ecosystem. It's a lovely story. Yes. But it, I think also speaks to problems that might occur down the road. Where should I find a wife? You, you're acting as my wife. I will marry you. I need a director.

Shall I listen to all of these actors' pictures? No, this man vouched for me years ago. You shall direct my film. That's exactly right. Dennis Dugan walks in. I'm sitting on the table just like the naughty boy in the movie. You shall direct this motion picture, sir. Here is $8 million.

But it really does speak to, I suppose, Dennis Dugan's modus operandi and how it perfectly intersects with sandalers. Totally. And in the middle of that is like this incredibly successful. I think they've done upwards of 10 features together. Not all of them critically revered. I would say nearly all of them commercially successful. Yeah.

And this is like, you know, this lays the groundwork because the other interesting reflection I had at the end of this is this movie was made in 1990. I still can't remember when Gras 2 came out. Like maybe 2015, was it? It was 16-ish? The first one and the second one? No, it would be 2012.

Oh, we said this in the last episode. 2014, maybe. But so what's interesting to me... No, we watched it in 2014, so... 2012-ish. 2012-12, 23 years of past between like problem child, which we're only meeting now, and grown-ups two, which is to my at least, you know, analytical brain where we met Dennis Dugan. There is not one iota of evidence that he has learned or changed anything in his approach to directing between these two movies.

You're right. There is no evidence. And not only that, but there's actually overwhelming evidence to sort of to support the contrary that he actively hasn't learned anything. This is why I wrote down Big Ben's, Big Ben Sports Town is Proto Kmart. Because there are scenes in this movie, in Dennis Dugan's first movie, that he has carried through all the rest of his movies that we have seen. It's hanging out in a department store that sells sporting's goods.

like a fingerprint of Dennis Dugan as a director and we have now seen the first time he planted his finger onto the ink. 100%. And there's more to substantiate this theory as well because Dennis Dugan, while making problem child, they were filming on film obviously, was getting in trouble for how... Overrunning. Yes. For how much film he was turning and how expensive it was because he was letting Gilbert

Gottfried improvise. He was letting him run. Yeah. And the studio were like, you can't do this. The digital revolution really must have been good news. for him. And Dennis Dugan, so in a 25-year, like, Hollywood reporter kind of catch-up about problem child in his career since was like, this is how I operate.

When we made Jack and Jill and Al Pacino was doing his scenes, Adam and I would say that's a rap, and Pacchina would say, let's do one more just for fun because he'd want to find something else. And it's like, you know, this is an architectural edite, but sometimes, and I truly believe this, less is more. Yeah. Like, these movies are not... Creativity is born of restrictions.

Remove the restrictions, you remove the creativity. We are not gaining more by letting this. And I love Gilbert Gottfried. And he's like, he's interesting to see on screen. He's an exciting presence. But I don't know that he's necessarily lighting the place up in this movie. I want to play devil. You know, you're not wrong, but to be fair to him, this is him as a pretty young man.

Yes. And Gilbert Godfrey as a character requires so much confidence to pull off the thing. he does. And so I think he just hadn't quite reached his zenith yet in terms of believing in himself to go fully off the handle. And also he's operating, he's working opposite a character, which is the boy

who is, who's called Junior, he's working opposite a character whose entire brief and, you know, operating system in the movie is to be the most outrageous, the most challenging, the rudest person. And so his wings are already clipped in that the magic

that you'd cast him for, he He has to be second banana to what Junior is doing. Yes. So let's talk about this kid. Well, yeah. So there's the basic premise, right? We've got this. I mean, I'm also here to say I had a few laughs along the way.

No doubt. The intro sequence of this movie is fucking wild. And it's like to, what I kept thinking about is that home alone came out the same year as this movie. I think Home Alone might have come out a few months afterwards. Do you know who auditioned for the role of junior? Who? McCauley Colgan. Yeah.

Makes sense. Lost out. Makes sense. And I can totally appreciate why, because the kid they got whose name I forget. I can't remember the actor's name. I don't even know if I wrote it down at any point. Who I believe I was doing a little bit of reading and I think we went on to have quite a challenging life afterwards. Yeah.

Not an illustrious, you know, IMDB page, I will say. No. Fell off multiple wagons, I think. And a few years ago he got divorced. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that because as of 2015, he made his piece with only being in two films. He was happy for the opportunity. I think he got married in 2016. He said he's got a beautiful girlfriend, three cats and a hamster, and life's good.

Well, not to be forever. Not everything needs to be forever. No, no, no. And, you know, divorce often happens for a reason. Home alone. Happy people don't get divorced. Has a timelessness to it. And this movie has an arcane quality to it.

And I think it is something to do with the meanness of which you spoke reading at that review earlier. The critics consensus, yeah. It's so mean-spirited. Actually, John Ritter is nothing but warmth. I think he's incapable of any other energy. His warmth and charisma, like the gravitas of his charisma, literally holds everything around this movie together because it isn't like the characters are exclusively unlikable.

Yes. Oh, yeah, sorry, so I was going to say the opening sequence of this movie is quite wild. It does give you tonally a good primer for what you're in for. And it is you watching a baby go from infancy to age nine, being deposited inside of a basket, increasingly grim doorsteps. So you start off and there is a baby that gets deposited at a mansion that is attended by a maid who discovers this little kid and then the family takes it in. The baby is shit. So they have to get rid of it. The baby pisses on the face of the would-be mother.

So then it's deposited a suburban house's doorstep, and then the kid creates more problems now slightly older. This is all foretold in a sequence that takes, you know, sort of 60 seconds as some credits, I believe, are playing out over the top of it. And then it gets to the point where it's like, goes to a trailer park, now the kid's like four or five,

and then ultimately winds up at a Catholic convent, I guess, an orphanage run by nuns. Yes. when Junior is seven or eight inside of a basket, which visually pretty funny gag that they keep depositing an increasingly growing child in a basket on door stairs. There was a steady hand guiding us through those visual gags. But it is very sad,

and you don't think about it too much until the bit three quartermark of the film where John Ritter does express, this is a traumatised child, and the reason he's acting out is no one has ever loved this kid. Yeah, yeah. It's because the joke is purely played for laughs at the start of the film, And basically there is no heart to this movie.

So all of the jokes, as callous as they may seem, you have to take into spirit of, well, this movie exists without consequence. It's for Junior, the movie, he is the protagonist. And what we're supposed to, it's supposed to be Dennis the Menace, right? So it's kind of like, here is a juvenile that is hilariously unbound by rules or social norms. And so we're supposed to get on board with that. But it's an orphan who no one loves. Yeah, and the movie acknowledges. And it's sort of, I think it's one of those situations where you're not necessarily getting away with it, but I'm not thinking about it until in the movie you fold in the, and then one of the characters is reckoning with the cause of behaviour. And you're like, if you left it well alone, I wouldn't be forced to sort of reckon with this. But now that you're saying, oh, the reason this child's behaviour is so insane is because of the hardship they've experienced. And it's like, you're not meant to know that. You're the movie I'm watching.

hard out yeah which was not a good moment so that was I sort of you know I hold

you know and you must I hold all of it so lightly in that respect like it's so we've got John Ritter

he is the one good character he's the one moral anchor moral anchor Ben little Ben they call him or Ben

he's not just a moral anchor but he's the sole morally acting ethically acting person in the entire film Junior sort of

has cause because he's both a kid and in bad circumstances. John Ritter's wife, Flo, is a bad person. Yes, status hungry. She wants a child simply to climb the social ladder and attend kids' birthday parties because that's where all the suburbanites are. Yeah, so Flo and Ben are kind of left out of the social plans of who would be their

enclave or peers because they all have children and they can. Relatable. And it's also interesting to see, you know, there is a, I guess, by modern standards, It's an interrogation of the treatment of people of infertility in this movie. It's like, you know, there is a callousness writ large from everyone. But like, you know, the character you mentioned earlier whose name was, what was the... Roy? Roy.

Six kids? Yeah. They're always having kids. Camping. They're very fertile. And he's got no sensitivity towards the fact that his friends, you know, who might want children, can't have them. He's showing him, like, they're both coaching a little league baseball game,

and he's showing up with a picture of an ultrasound. And this is after we've seen a scene where genre is told yet again that they can't have a child. But so there is like, there's something inside of that. She is very resistant flow to adopting a child because she wants a quote unquote real child. She doesn't wear secondhand clothing. She's not going to raise a secondhand child. Like I believe the film, even for its time, might have copped a bit of flack about the treatment of adoption. Pretty intense.

Yeah, yeah. But don't worry. She gets hers. She absolutely gets hers. and then some. So, you know, but I think what the real problem, because some of the set pieces work, and it's interesting to draw the parallel

between Home Alone and the timelessness of Home Alone because some of the set pieces do make me laugh, but they are unrelenting, and there is nothing being gained or lost between scenes. Like, you know, there is no way to reprimand this child, which means that we know we're not going to get exactly the same behaviour coming up next. Yeah.

John Like, it's watching an episodic television series Yeah There's always a reset But for scenes

In a movie It's got what On paper is a very breezy 80 minute runtime But my God It felt longer than It was just like

It was just over and over It's And you talk a lot About time dilation While watching The films That we subject ourselves To

And I felt a bit of that With this And that it feels like So much happens Like there's a lot Of stuff happening But it does feel Very long

There's no It's just It's a very common problem in Dennis Dugan related films which is that there is no visible goal towards which we're working and this one conceptually

there is like the question hanging over the entire movie of will this child learn to behave well will this child find a home with Flo and Ben like what you know like will they learn to embrace them as years that question is hangover that was why I would want to keep watching not because I'm laughing and I want more laughs because I'm like

you have sowed the seeds of a question which does warrant answer But the way they get there is so uninteresting and like there's no exploration of anything. It's just like it's sep-piece, set-piece, set-piece. And look, it was beleaguered by problems. The writers wrote a different movie. They filmed a different movie at every turn. And then the edit is a different movie.

Yeah, yeah. At every turn, this is being squeezed into something it wasn't. Which does some, you know, which if we then didn't have this entire back catalog of evidence that Dennis Dugan may not be the strongest person to Helmer story, would qualify why it worked out the way it did. But I was still like, it was just, I wanted to like it a lot more than I did. Can I posit a theory to you based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever? I think the reason it was so profitable is because, and I haven't seen it, I imagine it's got a great trailer set to back to the bone, a bad to the bone.

The soundtrack, the soundtrack was great. The Beach Boys performed a song for this soundtrack, specifically. Wow. Yeah. The Beach Boys, for a movie that came out a night. In 1990. You're getting late career up and down, Brian Wilson. I guess you're right.

You've got to catch him on the down swing to be able to afford at least an original recording of the song for a soundtrack and problem child. This just makes me think about, you know when we went to Las Vegas for Blart? Yeah. And we both watched, we synced up and watched Dewey Cox on the flight over. Yeah. Fuck, that movie was funny. That was fantastic. Far out.

Why were you thinking about that? Why is that related? Well, because like one of the most, I'd say, when that movie kind of loses its way is when it's satirizing biopics and so it has to satirize the serious turn but it's like they have jui cox in a studio and he's trying to basically do orchestral arrangements brian wilson style for pet sounds but he's got um you know he's got all these different animals and stuff and he's having a breakdown and that i suppose i was thinking of brian wilson on the down turn you know the the synapses were firing up yeah for something which is not relevant to what we're talking about but i feel like this is the kind of movie where um even in

the discussion you're sort of reaching for alternatives absolutely should we talk about seeing we've sort of cast a somewhat negative or questionable light on the movie, like moments that maybe made us laugh or things that we thought did work. Because I did, okay, first of all, I loved the font, problem child when it came up. I was like, that is a classical of its time font. Listen, I'm so sorry to be so bass and so crass. I thought flow was absolutely gorgeous. Yep. I mean, it's impossible to disagree. If I was John Ritter and I was on that set, and I was recently, and I was recently divorced as he was at the time. really, I would be, yeah, I would be

quite struck by her beauty. And she was given a very sort of, unlikable sort of... She was, her brief was, yeah, the character was bad on paper, but like, she still oozed charisma, I thought. In the ilk of, like, you know, evil stepmother was kind of the essence of the character brief. But I would like to sort of turn to things that I enjoyed

because I did get, like, laughs at the very start, the sort of introduction to, so after we have the opening credits and the establishment of how like wired junior is to do bad things. Now what guy's about to tell you, if I know my guy correctly, this I imagine is one of those things where there's a lot of people out there because this is a cult classic this movie and obviously as you mentioned before, it did very well financially. So also it was like a box office hit at the time in 1990. And it seems like it's one of those, you know, perennial VHS rentals.

It's always on the shelf at your friend's house sort of thing. It comes out on Friday movie night. I feel like there is a generation of people who have seen this film, remember this film fondly, and will forget the detail that you're about to go into of why Kramer is in this movie. Oh, well, yeah. I mean, I wasn't even racing to Kramer yet. But yeah, so that is interesting.

And also watching it as, well, Charles started watching it with me before she kind of drifted away. But was watching it. And, yeah, so Junior keeps getting punished at the orphanage and is eventually told he has to mop the floors while he watches another sort of goody, goody, two-shoes boy get farmed out to a happy family for adoption. And the nuns sort of ominously says good boys get adopted, bad boys. Stay here. Something else happens or, you know. But has to mop the floors.

As soon as the door's closed and the nuns ushering the goody-two-shoes young boy to his new family, throws the mop down, turns the TV on and goes cartoons. and it's wall-to-wall news coverage of someone called the bow-tie killer, which is Michael Richards, who wears a bow-tie who's been admitted to prison. And then, you know, Junior's like, oh, I like this guy. You know, which is, I suppose... He says, does he call him handsome? Or he says, like, what a good-looking fella. Yeah.

Because that different, it's pretty inconsistent, but they do go into his inner monologue quite a lot. Yeah, yeah. That's sort of a feature of Problem Child. And I think in the TV series, which this spun off, so there's a Problem Child 2 and 3. and a short-lived animated TV series, yeah. I imagine the internal monologue

is probably a feature of the animated series. So you think so. I could see this would lend itself very well to an animated series. We need to bring back the internal monologue in film. I feel like it's been missing for a long time. It's a great joke format structure. You're imagining Carrie Bradshaw and Sexton City too, undoubtedly.

It's a little different though. The device there is a little different. I want pure like I'm in the scene in present time, I'm not reflecting on the day or looking forward. to something that's about to happen while I'm writing in my journal. I want, what is Carrie thinking of what Samantha is doing right now, but not saying loud in the moment.

I want peep show. You want peep show. But he's so taken by him, he removes a bowtie from a doll and puts it on, and he's wearing a bowtie because he wants to emulate. His idol in this movie is like a serial killer. Which I suppose, you know, tonally is meant to do some heavy lifting in terms of like, this kid is actually...

Well, I wanted Circular Act, because you were going somewhere else. I'm sorry that we're gross into here. But I think this is interesting culturally. And I think that it is indicative of the time and of the states, the states of America. Yes. Serial killers, I feel like used to get a lot more chatter.

I don't think, I don't, I've heard that there's less of them now. I don't know if that's true. There's still out there. Well, it depends who you are. Certain criminologists think that there's like more than there's ever been. before but the FBI will have you believed there's less than ever has been before. Do you think that the reporting is obscuring their calling cards or do you think serial killers have realised that calling cards are perhaps anathema to getting away with it?

I think it's a combination of things. I think the media got instructed to stop lionising them. Yeah, yeah. Because they were sort of depicted back in the day like they are in this film where it was like, yeah, they were like comic book villains where they would have stylistic. It makes sense, you know, it's like, it's what they want. It's the defining trait killer is sort of the way that... The Zodiac Killer, you know.

Yeah, yeah. So I think it was just reflecting on what was happening in society at the time. It's crazy that the hero of the protagonist in this children's film is a serial killer. That's right. Who kills on screen? Yeah, yeah. He kills the... In the prison, he's being assessed by a psychologist.

to see if he would be fit, I guess to stand parole. It's just the psychologist, the killer, and the prison warden in the room. And so he's doing a series of Rorschach tests and Michael Richards is lying his ass off. I see a fluffy bunny in the clouds. And the warden's going, you don't see that. He just sees blood. And the psychologist is going, hey, please respectfully, come on. And then I don't even know what happens to the prison warden.

The warden gets kicked out because he keeps interrupting the test. He keeps being like, he's lying. He's lying. And the psychologist goes, you've got to get out of here. And he sits down and says to the serial killer Michael Richards, so sorry about that. And then Michael Richards kills him and steals his clothes and escapes the prison. Yeah. So, you know, America's a fucked up place now.

It was a fucked up place in the 80s too. I'm interested to think about because obviously we watch this movie and know Michael Richard's profile and he would have been somewhat of an unknown at the time. I tell you what? That scene where he's in the prison and he pulls out a cigarette. and 10 exclusively African-American men lean forward from the prison to offer him a light all at once, there was one distinctive cultural moment which went through my head when that played out on screen. And of course he's referring to many or any of Kramer's iconic entrances during the sitcom Seinfeld.

Correct. Yeah, but I think watching it, we know that he's going to be a feature of the movie. I think watching it in the cinema at the time, perhaps, if you're not aware of Michael Richards or who he is, you'd be like, oh, this is a bit random, there's this killer. You know, like, it's obviously, it's a bit of a Chekhov's gun, but it's interesting. I never thought they were going to go to the trouble of breaking him out of prison

and him becoming such a feature of the movie. Yeah. And I thought, and this is what Chelsea observed. She's like, well, obviously, that's his dad. Because there is the question of who is this child's parent and why is he so bad? And the connective tissue she saw was like, well, surely a logical twist that would exist in the world of this movie

is that that character who, he's trying to emulate who's on the run who's being profiled so much is his dad and this is not thought of at any point in the movie it's not alluded to it's not suggested there's no curiosity which sort of is alluded to the fact that junior goes and gets a bowtie to emulate this guy that he's on tv once he is the one figure that he looks on with any kind of esteem he writes letters to him in prison like that michael rich's character busts out of prison to find the author of these letters and is shocked to discover it's a child yeah because he thinks well he actually thinks It is, I think, quite a famous criminal called J.R.

He's like, yeah, me, junior. Yeah, yeah. You're eight. Yes. What's the fuck. So this is all... Then he hooks up with his mom. Yeah.

So he says, I haven't touched... So, okay, so the bow tie killer turns up at the house because he's just following the address that the letters have come from expecting to run into his, I think, old crime-friend JR. This is like, we're three quarters into the movie. This is, we're building towards a climax here. Because the bow-tie killers, like, I can't believe they let JR out of the clink. That's right.

Like, I'm going to go tee up with him and we're going to go on a spree, whatever. So he goes there, meets Junior, comes into the house, they invite him in for dinner. Junior is sort of panicking and going like, oh my God, he's here and I want to hang out with him. How am I going to convince my new adopted parents to keep him around? He says, this is my Uncle Marty. You've got to let him in. So they have him over for dinner. And meanwhile, Flo is like a blood relative, this is how we get rid of the person.

problem, child. We're going to force him off to his uncle. So she entertains him, charms him, cooks him dinner, and then they hook up in the kitchen. He sort of attacks her after revealing that he hasn't touched a woman for 15 years. And then after he says that, then she gets real into it. And then the tables are turned. And the bow tie killer is quite scared of flow, which is sort of a nice power dynamic into play. Yeah.

And if you're wondering what becomes of flow, she gets. kidnapped alongside the problem child by the bowtie killer. Johnra's character, Ben, who's realized that his wife is sort of a gold digger for one of a better turn of phrase and is no good from loses interest in, you know, rescuing her, rescues the boy. She winds up in a suitcase, hurled over a bridge into a pig transporter. Pig transporter that's going by and opens the suitcase to try and get out and a pig farts into her face. Yeah, it's pretty good stuff. Karma.

So, you know, that is all, I mean, fascinating and interesting, but also entirely answer to the original point I was making, which is we meet Junior, we're established here as the next scene, and this is me trying to big up to the movie or acknowledge moments that I found funny. We meet Flo and Ben in a doctor's office. They're at a fertility clinic. They're figuring out what names they want to call the baby. It's kind of a nice, playful scene.

It's not hilarious, but it's not funny. What do you think of the name, Hank? Personally? Yeah. I can't take it seriously because of Paul Blount Morkop too. Hank is the sort of bald security guard who fires the gun at the bulletproof suitcase while it's bouncing down the stairs. So not Hank Azaria, not Hank Hill?

Both featured, but no, this Hank has been said onto like the outermost layer of my brain. This is the first Hank. I'm imagining a Mount Rushmore of Hank on your head. When the neon line in my brain for the word Hank lights up, that's what I see. Wow. So they're out there and then they go into the doctor's office. And I don't know who played this doctor, but it is a star comedic turn. The doctor is incredibly funny.

So they're going there. I tried to look him up. Yeah. And I was getting confused if I was seeing the right guy because if it's the guy, I think it was, he only did Spanish language voiceover work after this movie. So I kind of think I had the wrong guy. Absolutely incredible. But they're sitting down in his office.

They've been waiting in the foyer of the fertility. clinic and he says now of course you know at our clinic we're proud of our 99% success rate and they're going oh my god and then he goes you are the 1% and i thought such a straightforward joke really well executed really funny sort of incompetent doctor material which is can be such a goldmine and then he goes on to sort of biologically explain why they're having struggles um getting pregnant and he's got this sort of insane geometric but i think you've skipped over the best joke of the whole movie. The sequence

where he says you're negative. No, he says you're positive. Oh yeah. That's like a who's on first of the fact that they have not conceived and cannot conceive

and will not conceive. I think they're talking about being infertile and he says, you're positive. And he goes, that's great. He says, no, no,

it's terrible. What you mean? Positive's good. Negative's bad. He goes, no, negative's good. Yeah.

Yeah. There is a very silly little back and forth. Haven't done it justice. But it's very, Very good. I actually truly thought that was the most skillful bit of comedy in the movie. And then the next bit is he does some physical comedy. He's got this sort of geometric or base representation of like... Flopian tubes. A womb. A womb.

Overee's a womb and stuff. And he takes it out and he's trying to explain it to flow. And he's sort of bungling the bits and he's dropping them. And he keeps being like, this is your ovary. And then he drops it down. He tries to get it back in. He goes, well, it's not important we get it back in because you don't have one of these. And... Is your one of these isn't green. They're brown. Yeah. He's really getting it wrong in a way that is properly, like in very simple terms, I was like, this is funny.

Yeah. We're going to have a funny movie here. And it is, sadly, I would say, comedically, tonally less for me from that point forward. But, you know, obviously Gilbert Gottfried's a parent as like the adoption agent for the orphanage is very funny. It's all right. He's doing it. You know, he's talking to all the nuns. The nuns are trying to get junior thrown out of the orphanage.

And he's going, what are you talking about? And he's, you know, the boys. putting on a performance to be like, I'm a sweet boy. Gilbert Godfrey is somehow, I think he seems to be sort of in charge of the adoption facility that the nuns work at, and the nuns are pleading with him to get this problem child out of the orphanage. He's causing too many problems for the nuns. And the boys, and the boy's lying, he's doing exactly what, you know, to further

build evidence of the father-s-son connection between Michael Richards and him, he's lying in front of the nuns. He's going, well, I do this. and I love it here and I want to be a priest. I want to be a priest. I just want to learn my lessons. A boy nun!

He wants to be a boy nun! That was making me laugh. Yeah, it wasn't Gilbert Godfrey in full flight yet because I think he was too young. So I sort of wanted more. I want the dial turned up a little bit. But, you know, it was all good.

That's fine. It's nice to see him. You know, and then, but few other laughs along the way. There's one later on when Flo, who has proven herself for a very bad person is like defending herself. And she goes,

a bad parent because I hate my child. That was genuinely so good. That's a really funny line. Yeah. And I'm not proud of this. The hardest laugh that caught me the most off guard for a myriad of reasons. Ben and Flo adopt Jr. They bring him home.

They're excited to show them their house. They introduce him to the cat. They introduce him to their parent. He's going, do I have my own bed? And John Ritter is going, Junior, this is the big time. You've got your own room. I hope you like clowns. They open the door to his bedroom.

They have gone so ham on clowns. It's actually like in and of itself. It's one of the most mental things you'll see. It is. The room is so heavily clown themed. It's clown bears. It's clown wallpaper. All the toys are clowns.

The chest of toys is clowns. It's clown curtains. It's clown dresses. It's literally wall-to-wall clown. As two guys who recently spent a lot of time with Joker, this would actually be a fine cinematic origin story of how he came to be, that it's an orphan who's been passed around, dejected and let down by 30 successive adults who just have this ward in their care for the

shortest amount of time and get him out of their lives as soon as he presents any issues for them whatsoever. And then really fixates on the iconography of the first bedroom he's given of his own, which is clown everything. It is extreme home makeover edition if you were having a bad acid trip. 100%. It's like you said you're like clowns, here you go. And it's so jarring.

And honestly, just as an audience member, it catches you off guard so much because you're like, well, where is the ineptitude in this movie going to come from? Because obviously these guys aren't necessarily qualified to parent a challenge seven-year-old

because that's so much to bite off. Yes. And obviously there also maybe, like they're sort of, genre's character especially is presented as normal or as like a tethered reality. But what they've done

to this bedroom is so beyond the pay. It is so insane. You're watching it and it is genuinely discombobulating as an audience because you're like well I don't have

an anchor point in this movie anymore they have gone too hard on the clowns for them to be the normal people and you're really at sea and again this is a moment at which

the movie decides to use the internal monologue device and we hear from Junior who's sort of narrating his experience arriving and they go we hope you like clowns they open the door it's all clowns

and Junior's internal monologue goes oh my gosh these people are ours and honestly I'm not proud but my God I was so aghast I laughed I was like I can't believe this movie it was so funny that was actually the moment where I was like I can't believe this came out the same year as Home Alone

because you wouldn't have the R word at Home Alone you wouldn't dream of that coming out of McCauley Colkin's Butterwood Mountain's down to angelic face but then again you've got to remember that the movie they set out to make The Frankenstein we wound up with is the consequence of two writers who are writing a satirical takedown of family-friendly movies as a dark comedy and a studio who are making the dark comedy that's been submitted into a family film. Do you think us hearing Jr. say the R word was vestigial organs from the movie that we didn't get to ever see? Absolutely. I think like...

One leftover sort of marking that this was supposed to be another thing. I know the reshoots involved a retweaked ending and the inclusion of the birthday party scene when Junior arrives at a costume birthday party dresses the devil and basically is an extended montage of him finding different ways to disrupt a child's birthday party. Nothing said studio solutions to me louder than that scene. This actually, I didn't know any of this production history

that you've just told me, but this tracks because the final third of this movie is very different in every way to the first two years. thirds of the film. The pacing is like a lot quicker. It feels like we're doing something for the first time. But it's also very formulaic. We're in that birthday party for it feels like about 10 minutes of screen time and it's just the sort of repeated montage. It's my party and I'll cry if I want to. So what is the rhythm? We get junior throwing presents away from Lucy. Like they're Lucy's presence. He's chucking them out a window or whatever while dressed as the devil. Lucy crying and slow motion getting

increasingly emotional. Then the only bit of like, you know, variety within this montage is Junior doing different dastardly things. He puts a toad into the punch bowl. He replaces all of the candles on the cake with tiny sticks of dynamite. Yeah. So it lasts too long, but it is a very Dennis the menace, the menace, sort of mechanical way of getting through some storytelling.

It's a functional way of telling a story. And I imagine, you know, this is where studio notes, you can literally see them on the screen, which is like, this isn't funny, but it's, it's like,

it's a fest, it's a representation of what people find funny. It's like, it's our best guess. It's something which people would find funny in the context of this movie. So it was a very challenged production. I mean,

you know, love story aside, I think Gilbert Gottfried, in a reflection on his podcast, was saying that it had the feeling of like a cursed production. John Ritter was... Why is this movie important, is my question.

It's weird to me that it's important, but it does... I think it was... Because it was like a 25-year reunion that I was reading about, where the cast will go back together. It's like, this is just some fucking movie, isn't it? No, it's got childhood cult classic status for a lot of people.

A lot of people grew up with this movie, saw it on television repeats, I think, formed a relationship to it. And I suppose if you're watching it as a child, it would feel incredibly subversive. of and exciting because it is permission for one child to embrace. Say the R word. All of their worst instincts.

That's right. But I mean, to be fair, children in the 1990s were the language that was flying around, I don't think R word was that out the gate for them. No. But so I can see how it might take hold as a cult classic. But yeah, there is an amount of sort of information available about it, which I found to be quite interesting as well. I just like to reflect further, you know, to zoom further out from, I suppose, you know,

the planet problem child to the broader galaxy of Dugan. Okay. Is this movie was obviously critically reviled. Not obvious to me. I've only seen one review. Brain donors afterwards, which was the movie he couldn't get Sandler on, was also a both critical and a commercial failure. And so his response to that after.

the sort of the criticism of his first two films was that, and this is an interview he gave in 2015, more publication should have critics who specialise in critique and comedy and goes on to say the following. This is a quote. To hate grown-ups is just ludicrous.

It's a funny movie. We didn't mean it to be anything else but a hangout movie where you go sit down and get a lot of last from a bunch of guys just hanging out. I don't give a fuck what critics think. I give a fuck that almost every one of my movies opens up number one and makes a giant problem for the studio

and people buy them, rent them, quote them and have a good time seeing them. And he says about Sandler, how fucking dare anybody say that he's a shitty entertainer? Now, I agree. I don't think it will be fair for anyone to say that Adam Sandler is a shitty entertainer. I mean, we spent a year doing that, but go on.

I think it would be fair to criticize some of his performances as poor. I think if you look at his entire output, it would be unreasonable to say Adam Sandler is not a fantastic entertainer. I think it's a very funny response to critics who aren't always correct and everyone who creates is welcome to disagree with critics

as much or as little as they see fit. But the response to it is like, nah. We're doing this portion of the podcast, the worst idea of all time, to bookend 15 years of a project you and I have been engaged with Dennis Dugan is at either end. Yeah. So is Adam Sandler. And I think it represents the growth that I have done as a person where at the start

in 2014 when we launched the podcast, I would have been completely opposite the view that has just been presented from Dennis Dugan. and I now could not agree with him more. Yeah. Yeah. They make a fucking profitable movie that some people go and watch and quote and they take their kids

and they rent it on Netflix and the studio makes a boatload of money and everyone's happy. And then some fucking idiot. Yeah, yeah. Some critic come. Two stone 24 year olds come along with an opinion. Not us.

We're fine, I think. But like movie critics to be casting the same intense eye of reviewing critique. They're running it through the same lens as that year's best picture front runners. Exactly. Some people who are like trying to analyse Oscar bait, it's fucking

stupid and Dennis Dugan's right and he rules and Adam Sandler rules and furthermore, I would even go so far as to say they're living their life right. They're just having a good old time and they've managed to be incredibly successful doing

so. Yeah. They're vibrant. Oh look, I couldn't agree more. But I also think it is not a catch-all or a defense against the fact that that attitude also means you are going to be making genuinely bad movies. According to who? According to me.

The guy who's fucking watching them all the time. Like, yeah, by all means, have your party, eat your biscuits, ignore the outside noise. But it's not like a fix-all solution. to the fact that some of what you're making fucking sucks. It feels like a great place to end it. Do you got anything else you want to say about Problem Child? Oh, ma'am. Just have a look at my notes to see if there's anything I miss.

It's pretty impressive car sequence at the end. Reflecting on Problem Child, look, it's of its time. There were a few laughs peppered throughout. 80 minutes is always an operational amount of time to spend with a movie. And look, I think, you know, It's not for me. I'm going to give it... I'm going to give it...

Out of seven orphanages... Okay. Three... Three orphanages. It's a tricky word. Quite an unwieldy. I'm going to give this movie two orphanages out of seven orphanages. It's interesting, isn't it?

It's not popular. But it's like... And I guess it's... You know, I'm excited to watch these movies often because to see the different ways in which they might fail or be bad. Yes. So an interesting learning is like,

I think this is bad in a similar way that grown-ups too was bad. Yeah. And that is... Makes sense. When you look at who's directing these pictures. And it makes a lot of sense. And it's funny.

I mean, and as you know, as ever, the problem is us. The problem is us to have this information and show up to a movie 25 years after this one and be like, hey, the movie that you've made is still bad in the same way.

All the other movies you've made was bad. Who does that? Who would have thunk it? But I mean, look, it's, it is genuinely kind of illuminating. Like what we are stumbling into as we travel through the sound like is the connective tissue, the background noise, like the sort of, you know, the pieces of string that connect different collaborators in moments and time to information we already have. This is what exploration is about.

We're spacemen. Yeah. We're out there. Yeah. Thank you for coming with us in our spaceship. Yeah. It's lovely to have you here. Thank you.

Thank you all. And look, I suppose, you know, I don't know if you want to solve for what we'll watch next on or off, Mike. Yeah, let's pick it now on Mike. Well, I mean... You've got a suggestion loaded up? Kind of. I think there's a clear connection that we can draw between Dennis Dugan's directorial feature, the information that on his second feature he was trying to get Sandler involved,

and their first collaboration being Happy Gilmore, it's like, why don't we watch Happy Gilmore? Great. Why don't we fucking watch Happy Gilmore? I'd love that. This is a movie that was the funny, I would have said for three years, I would hold up as the funniest movie in the world.

Well, let's ruin your childhood. Let's revisit it. Exciting times.