“Adorable Creature”, the forgotten film that preceded “Home Alone”

Tell me if you’ve heard this story before: a mischievous boy uses tricks and his wits to defeat criminals before being saved by an understanding father figure. No, we are not talking about Kevin McCallister and his adventures at home alone, but about the movie “Adorable Creature” (“Problem Child”), which was ahead of “My poor angel” (“Home Alone”) for four months, when it premiered on July 27, 1990. Now that 30 years have passed since the release of this family comedy, we analyze why it has been almost completely forgotten unlike its counterpart more famous.

Directed by Dennis Dugan in his debut as a feature film director, the film revolves around Ben Healy (John Ritter), a kind but spineless man who decides to adopt an orphan named Junior (Michael Oliver) without knowing that the child is the equivalent of a natural disaster. Healy will not only have to deal with his new son, but also his ambitious wife Flo (Amy Yasbeck), his tyrannical father Big Ben (Jack Warden) and Junior’s pen pal, a fugitive known as the “Tie Killer.” bun” (a Michael Richards before “Seinfeld”).

Rounding out the cast are comedian Gilbert Gottfried as an adoption agent and Junior’s nemesis and Peter Jurasik as Roy, the family’s abusive neighbor.

Nowadays there is almost no talk about “Adorable Creature” and if we do it is to point out how it is one of the worst comedies ever made. It currently has an unenviable 0% ‘freshness’ on the Rotten Tomatoes portal, although the audience gives it a vaguely respectable 41% preference.

“Universal made the right decision by cutting ‘Adorable Creature’ to just 81 minutes, but it didn’t go far enough. The studio should have cut another 75 minutes and released this incredible disaster as a short film,” wrote a critic for Variety magazine.

While Joaquín de Luna wrote for El País: “The adventures of a very bad boy exploiting the vein started with ‘Home Alone’ (alternative name for ‘My poor little angel’ in Spain). Terrible. “Do not let children get too close to the screen.”

The movie that (almost) no one trusted

Initially conceived as a black comedy in the style of “Throw Momma from the Train,” the script for “Adorable Creature,” written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, was changed to become a feature film. familiar, perhaps explaining the eclectic tonality of the film.

“Even when we were making it, we were all thinking ‘this is going to be a disaster,’” comedian Gilbert Gottfried revealed in an interview with AVClub. “In fact, I remember when the recording finished and I was going home, I was saying goodbye to John Ritter and he was looking around, shrugging his shoulders and saying ‘Well, you know how it is in this business: you do something and then You go to the next project.’ I think he thought it was going to be a total failure.”

Even Universal Studios itself thought the film would be a failure. Again from Gottfried, who recalled how one of the executives said “we’re going to treat this like a soldier wounded in battle: we’ll let him die and run to save our asses.”

The first version of the film was also not very well received in test screenings. As Dugan recalled during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter: “When we had our first preview, 70% of the audience left the room and some people were noticeably upset,” he recalled. “We had a score of 30, and you’re in trouble if you get a 60.”

The one who did give them his support was the then president of Universal Pictures, Tom Pollock, who gave them enough confidence in the project to finance two additional weeks of filming, during which they modified the ending and some other scenes.

Despite the changes made, confidence in the film did not seem high and there was no press screening before the July 27 premiere. But contrary to the expectations of its creators and the opinion of critics, after its release the film proceeded to be a success at the box office, grossing US$72.2 million on a budget of US$10 million. And although these profits pale in comparison to the exorbitant US$476.7 million achieved by “Home Alone” months later, “Adorable Creature” was still positioned as one of the most profitable films for Universal Studio that year, above films like “Chucky: The Devil’s Doll 2” and “Darkman”.

This success, combined with the wave unleashed by “Home Alone”, led to “Adorable Creature” having sequels in 1991 and 1995 – the latter with other actors and made for television -, as well as an animated series that lasted two seasons. And although we call it a forgotten film, at least we know of an attempt to revive the franchise in 2014, when Universal Television tried to create a television series with the same premise, a project that ended up not being successful.

time passed

But we return to the question that led us to write this note. Why is “Home Alone” considered a classic while “Adorable Creature” is only mentioned in anniversaries and lists of the worst comedies? We can only speculate the reasons for this, but we assume that, apart from the quality of the former and the lack thereof of the latter, there is something deeper behind the difference in popularity.

In our opinion, the difference between the films is that “Adorable Creature” makes you suffer as a ‘terrible child’ – and sympathize with the poor father – while “My Poor Little Angel” makes you become the ‘terrible child’, going back to the spectator to his childhood. Who as a child has not imagined what it would be like to have the whole house to yourself, without rules or restrictions? This nostalgic factor, to which is added the fact that it is set at Christmas – a time that usually evokes good memories in people – seems to us to be part of the reason why, almost three decades after its release, people continue to talk about the film. film with Macaulay Culkin. As a curious aside, it is known that Culkin auditioned for the role of Junior, but it ended up in the hands of Michael Oliver. What different films they would both be if their child actors changed roles.

The truth is that despite the relative oblivion, the majority of the cast of “Adorable Creature” seems to have had their happy ending. Its director, Dennis Dugan, became a frequent collaborator of Adam Sandler and directed films such as “Happy Gilmore” (1996), “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” (2008) and “Grown Ups” (2010), the which were lucrative enough at the box office. During the production of this film, John Ritter met actress Amy Yasbeck, who would go from acting as his wife to being his wife in real life, a marriage that would last until the actor’s death in 2003. Screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, whose story original was modified to make “Adorable Creature”, they have said this about the film “Over the years, we have made peace with the movie, because people like it so much!” The two continued to collaborate and in 1996 received a Golden Globe for “The People vs. “Larry Flynt.” His latest film was “Dolemite Is My Name” (2019) with Eddie Murphy.

Meanwhile, the film’s problem child, Michael Oliver, would retire completely from acting in 1995 and now works as a programmer. “Having been thrust into the spotlight as a child, I appreciate the peace and quiet,” he said during a cast reunion in 2012. “I’m pretty happy with my life the way it is now. I have a decent job. Hard work. I have a beautiful lover. We have three cats and a hamster. It’s a nice, quiet existence. I like it.”