Not bad

John Hughes seems to want to recreate “Home Alone” with his “Dennis the Menace” script but the real winner here is Walter Mathau, scoring the film’s biggest laughs as the eternally crabby neighbor of the title character, Mr. Wilson.

It’s summer vacation and 5 year old Dennis (Mason Gamble) is going to be hanging around more- an idea that sends many of the seniors in the neighborhood to pinch his cheeks and send him on his merry way. Not Wilson though, a “get off my lawn” type who sees Dennis’ trouble coming a mile away and demands the boy be disciplined harshly for his misdeeds.

Hughes understands the character though, and so does Gamble- who gives Dennis his child-like innocence and curious nature- the latter of which usually gets him into trouble that his course corrections only make worse. The best of which is when Dennis breaks Wilson’s dentures, and then in his own well-meaning way, tries to fix them using chiclets. The film is right in Hughes wheelhouse of goofy slapstick and Mathau, never breaking from grumpy cantankerousness, is not only the overly-serious, impatient foil the film needs but his reactions to things like paint on his burgers or pine sol in his mouthwash go a long way toward selling the joke. The heart of the relationship is Dennis does have admiration for and an inquisitiveness of this man and in the end, we want Wilson to see that.


And if you have an actress as renowned as Joan Plowright playing Mrs. Wilson, you have to do more than make her a second fiddle. The way the movie breaks down the Wilson marriage and her wants as far as kids go is well done, and she plays the role of grandmother figure to Dennis with sweetness while being a voice of reason foil to her husband.


Directed by Nick Castle, the suburban town in the movie seems more like it was picked out of the 1950’s TV show itself- its a pleasant white picket fence place where parents have no qualms about sending their kids out to play at night- and where those kids spend time doing the lost arts of exploring and making tree-houses, ect. For some social updating- Hughes also seems to be pointing out some of the hardships of mothers returning to the workforce, as Dennis’ mother does, though that’s not his main concern.


If he repeats himself in any one way it’s in the drifter character Switchblade Sam (Christopher Lloydd), a dirty, grotesque pick-pocket who spends much of the movie’s time in the peripheral before taking the brunt of Hughes most brutal slapstick in the third act. Hughes motto is the badder you are, the more you’re gonna get it, and a lot of this is funny, if too reminiscent of “Home Alone” and unfortunately puts Mathau on the sidelines. The film is better with Dennis and Wilson together.