Problem Child 2 (1991)

Problem Child 2 arrived in the summer of 1991 with a mandate that can be stated plainly: the studio wanted a sequel shot before Michael Oliver grew old enough to require a different child actor. The screenwriting team of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, stung by criticism of the first film, responded by escalating the vulgarity until the initial cut earned an R rating. What we have, then, is a family comedy assembled with the urgency of a perishable good. Junior Healy moves to Mortville, pops a balloon with a slingshot, and begins sabotaging his father's courtship prospects with the dedication of a mid-level bureaucrat protecting his department.

The courtship is where the film's sensibilities announce themselves. Ben's romantic options are a controlling ex-wife, a scheming heiress who threatens to ship the boy off to Baghdad, and a school nurse who exists chiefly to be won. LaWanda DuMore, the richest woman in town, is dispatched through a scheme involving a swapped blood sample and a botched plastic surgery that leaves her with an enormous nose, the joke being that ugliness disqualifies her from marriage. This is the comic climax. Any viewer arriving with modern expectations about representation, gender, or the dignity of the human face will find the cupboard bare.

There is no social program here. No sermon, no lesson about acceptance or identity, no argument about who deserves to be seen. The film wants only to make children laugh at vomit, explosives, and a woman's disfigurement. It achieves that modest goal and nothing else. In an age that rewards filmmakers for saying something, this one says nothing at all, loudly, for roughly eighty minutes. We record the result without judgment. It is a document of its moment, and its moment had no interest in ours.