Zach and I don’t often watch movies together, but tonight he wanted to see this pic on Netflix called Little Monsters. It’s a Fred Savage film from 1989, that must have put him right in the midst of his Wonder Years stretch. In fact, he was basically the same character. Within minutes of it starting, I could tell this was going to be garbage.
In a strange casting overlap with Home Alone, the actors seemed to bellow, “We’re New York: deal with it West Coast.” But that wasn’t as bad as the characterizations. For one, they were all ill-defined, what with character development being nonexistent. Fred Savage was, well, Fred Savage in his adult-spoken way, and unbelievably well-adjusted.
Now for Howie Mandel. Jesus H. Christ, why did you take this role? Mandel as the monster has to be the most obnoxious part of the whole trainwreck. He’s absolutely nuts, never once remaining still for a shot. It makes you wonder if he isn’t on angel dust the whole time.
Then there’s the continuity/logic problems glaring right at you the whole time. The kids just magically appearing in their school at night to break into a supply closet? Do you know how hard it is to even break into a school? Even in the ‘80s? Hard. Then within five minutes they’re back home jumping down the portal to Hell.
Putting aside the bad makeup, the bad direction, the bad acting, here is when you know that you’ve really gone to Hell: when you realize a studio focus-group has taken you for a ride. Every decision on the film deleted the target audience until nobody was left. They didn’t even know it.
The PG-13 language rating killed off the kid audience. The boring “humor” killed off the adult audience. It was honestly the first movie Zach has actually said, “Ugh. That was a bad movie. But I made good popcorn, didnt’t I?” How sweet.
