'The kid stays in the picture'. Why...?

We’ve all been there. The hotly-anticipated action/comedy/fantasy film debuts, a movie that you’ve waited for months to see, and you head to the cinema with friends or family in the hopes that it will be an experience that you will thoroughly enjoy. The action will be actiony. The comedy will be, well, comedy-y. And you hope for the opportunity to be able to pore over the subtle nuances of brilliance/explosions long after the film is over. You settle in, the lights go down, the curtains draw open…and you spend the next 90 minutes flabbergasted at the uncanny awfulness of a certain cast player; awfulness so unyielding that it overwhelms the film itself and ruins the entire experience for any and all attentive viewers. I speak, of course, of the “kid”.

The “kid” can take many forms – annoying sidekick, awkward character actor, blubbering deadweight, and so on. Sometimes the “kid” is purposely annoying, so it is difficult to define their true level of irritation. I doubt that I could find many people that think Michael Oliver’s portrayal of “Junior” in Problem Child is anything short of nauseating. He’s a wretched child in a wretched film, but that’s the idea. So he cannot be included here. Same goes for Brett Kelly’s character of Thurman Merman in Bad Santa. Thurman is supposed to be an idiot, and Brett pulls it off quite well, so he did his job and is not on the list either. However, there are many instances where a “great” movie becomes merely “good”, a “good” movie ends up just “ok”, or an “ok” movie turns out to be “intolerable” solely because of the “kid”. In “honor” of said annoying child character, I have compiled a list of the 8 worst prepubescent offenses to cinema.

8. Max Reede (Justin Cooper) – Liar Liar (1997)

It’s a bad sign when the mere sight of a certain character on screen drives one to irrational rage, but that’s the case with Max Reede, the mop-topped son of Jim Carrey’s Fletcher Reede in Liar Liar. Unfortunate children can thank Max for the short-lived, late 1990s fad of parents giving their children Moe-style haircuts and making them easy targets for frequent playground beatings. But although Max’s idiotic hairstyle is the most outwardly-obvious problem with the character, his status as ‘film albatross’ only truly rears its head when he becomes the movie’s moral center. I understand that films with kids teaching adults an important life lesson can sometimes work, but thanks to Max, this one falls flatter than his Beatlesque bangs.

You see, Fletcher constantly misses important events in Max’s life (baseball games, birthdays, etc.) because of his demanding job, so Max decides Daddy is just a big fat liar. Taking it a step further and figuring that all adults lie all the time, Max wonders how great everything would be if nobody was ever allowed to lie again, so when he blows out the candles on his birthday cake, that’s just what he wishes for. Cue oft-absent father Fletcher encountering disaster at every turn, including nearly losing his job and becoming a pariah around town due to his inability to practice his usual brown-nosing interactions. Did I mention that Fletcher is a lawyer? And now he can’t lie! Hoho!

Throughout the film, Max rarely shows any emotion beyond hang-dog disappointment with nearly every adult that he encounters, while the adults all feverishly scramble to live up to a 9-year-old’s Christ-like perfection. Inevitably, the moral of the story ends up being that jobs and “grown up stuff” are stupid and that adults need to just drop everything at their children’s whims because that’s “what’s important”. Take this “children know best” theory to its end and everybody is living in homeless shelters and wearing tissue boxes for shoes. But at least there’s plenty of time to play catch when your daddy doesn’t have a job, right Max? Cue the vomiting.

7. Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) – Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001); Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets (2002)

I realize that I may catch flak for this selection, but do you honestly remember what the first two Harry Potter films were like? Until Alfonso Cuaron saved the franchise with the incredible Prisoner of Azkaban, the entire series was in danger of becoming a trite and boring example of how not to adapt children’s novels to cinema. Thanks to borderline-listless directing from Chris Columbus and an awkward child cast, the first two films are nearly unwatchable, and no character was more difficult to watch than Rupert Grint’s Ron Weasley.

In recent Potter selections, Grint has established himself as an actor with great comedic timing and an ability to successfully portray a wide variety of emotions; gravitas even. In the early Chris Columbus films, Grint’s Weasley was a painful buffoon, used for nothing more than a moronic foil to Harry’s burgeoning heroism. Not yet able to show a bevy of emotions, Weasley’s single and ever-present countenance, one of tight-lipped befuddlement, is perhaps the single most annoying facial expression ever captured on film. While Harry is beginning to get into the rhythm of constantly saving the lives of everyone around him, Ron is breaking his wand or accidentally casting spells on himself, all the while grimacing like he’s been sprayed in the face with lemon juice.

One wonders if all that is required to gain entrance to Hogwarts is wizarding blood or lineage. If so, then that’s some serious nepotism in favor of the Weasley family! I can’t imagine that magical ability was a prerequisite to be admitted, as Ron spent his first two years at Hogwarts embarrassing himself constantly and showing little to no reason why he should have been allowed to so much as walk through Hogwarts’ front doors, let alone enroll there.

6. Rachel Ferrier (Dakota Fanning) – War of the Worlds (2005)

Contradictorily, Ferrier would probably be higher on the list if she had a more vital role in War of the Worlds, but the very fact that she does so little is what guaranteed her inclusion in the first place. I can only imagine the intricate planning that went into the conversations between director Steven Spielberg and Rachel Ferrier’s portrayer, Dakota Fanning, when it came to fleshing out her character. I imagine it went something like this:

Spielberg: “Ok, now in this scene a giant alien ship is chasing the car you are riding in. Do you remember what to do?”
Fanning: “Yep! Scream and cry.”
Spielberg: “You got it. Annnnd….ACTION!”
Fanning: “SHRIEEEEEEK!!! BWAAAAAA!!!!!!!”

(Repeat throughout the picture)

Under the guise of an action movie, the 2005 version of War of the Worlds is actually a film about a family learning to be a family again. Single divorced father Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is treated with disdain by son Robbie and with offhanded acceptance by daughter Rachel. When the Martians come to invade and occupy Earth, the Ferriers learn to be a cohesive unit under pressure and to love each other again. The only problem with that is that 20 minutes into the invasion, the audience is already actively rooting for Rachel to either be separated from the family or just blasted into powder already.

Now, I’ll admit that it’s in the best interest of the screenwriters to show Ray’s selfless and caring side after they set him up as a bit of a smarmy jerk at the beginning of the film, but does that have to translate into pulling his idiot daughter out of harm’s way every two minutes? To make Ray a believable Everyman hero, the script pencils in his daughter as the most helpless person in the world, in constant need of saving, constantly screaming, constantly crying, and, to top it off, a sufferer of some vague nervous disorder. I have a 3-year-old daughter who I love dearly, but if we were transplanted into the roles of Ray and Rachel Ferrier, I’d have lasted about 10 minutes before snapping and telling her “yeah, yeah, the aliens are coming. I GET IT! Stop CRYING, already!”

Perhaps worst of all, Rachel not only has a severe case of the mega-nerves, she also suffers from “Never Do What the Adults Tell You” Syndrome. Told to be quiet, she invariably breaks the tension by screaming. Told to stay out of sight inside a deserted farmhouse, she invariably breaks the tension by illogically figuring that she would be safest in an open field and thusly runs outside straight into the arms of the Martians, necessitating yet another “Rescue Rachel Again” sideplot. To say that Rachel is utterly distracting and ruinous to the picture as a whole is an understatement.

5. Kevin McAllister (Macaulay Culkin) – Home Alone (1990)

Culkin’s most famous role is an obvious inclusion here and a nightmarish portent of things to come regarding this list. You’re not reading this incorrectly – Kevin is, in fact, only #5. That there are four worse examples of awful child characters than the gleefully-homicidal McAllister child is hard to imagine, but before we move on to the worst of the worst, let us study young Kevin.

At least the makers of Home Alone knew how to deal with their character, unlike previous examples. Kevin is, from the beginning, rightly portrayed as a nasty little irritating worm whose own family can barely stand him and constantly berate him for his backtalk and smart mouth. He’s such a non-entity in his own home that when the McAllister clan leaves for their Christmas vacation to Paris, Kevin is left behind. Instead of being frightened, Kevin is ecstatic. He can’t stand his family either and thinks that he successfully wished them away the night before while he sulked in bed. With those annoying people (who feed him, clothe him, and provide him with a warm bed) out of the way, Kevin is now free to raid the fridge, mess with his older brother’s private property, and jump on his parents’ bed at his leisure.

Meanwhile, Kevin’s mother doesn’t realize that her son is missing until she’s flying over the Atlantic. Large group or not, that’s some basic parenting skills that need to be taken into question, but I digress. Once in Paris, she frantically tries to book a ticket back to the States, with little success, while the rest of the family act like they’d just rather continue their Parisian vacation. Can’t say I blame them.

As if watching an obstinate brat in desperate need of a spanking isn’t bad enough, the filmmakers soon see fit to turn him into a kind of urbanite Rambo, due to his house becoming a target of the Abbott and Costello of movie burglars, the Wet Bandits (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern). The Wet Bandits burgle during the Christmas season by paying attention to which houses have their automatic lighting systems on and, thusly, are empty for the holidays. Although most 8-year-olds have been coached to call for help when accosted by creepy strangers, that doesn’t make for a very interesting movie. Therefore, Kevin’s observance of the skulking figures outside his window prompts him to not bother with the police and instead turn the McAllister abode into a house of horrors of Edgar Allen Poe-like proportions. Having shown exactly zero fluency in anything besides being a thoroughly-unlikable urchin, Kevin now suddenly possesses the ability to construct elaborate booby traps and predict the movements and strategies of two seasoned burglars; burglars who are both stronger and faster than him and brag on multiple occasions of the horrific injuries they soon plan to inflict on him.

So what happens? Naturally these two career criminals nonsensically, but predictably, stumble into every trap this grade schooler has created and get the utter crap beaten out of them. After every successful ‘shovel to the face’ or ‘flamethrower to the head’ trap, Kevin fist-pumps and mugs for the camera and suddenly you realize that you very badly want the next trap to fail horribly so that the Wet Bandits can drown him in the bathtub and ransack the house. Instead, the burglars are eventually foiled and arrested, the rest of the McAllisters finally make their way back home, and everybody realizes that they do all care for and love each other. That is, until the next time one of them ticks off Mr. Mini Mad Scientist and they choke on the razor blades he put in their corn flakes.

4. Buster Blues (J. Evan Bonifant) – Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)

What is a guaranteed and surefire way to ruin a franchise? Take everything that made the first film great, dilute it, homogenize it, sugarcoat it, and be sure to add an annoying and totally inessential kid. The necessity of even making another Blues Brothers movie after John Belushi’s death is certainly debatable, but I’m sure that what fans had not been clamoring for in the 18 years between the two Blues Brothers entries was the inclusion of a creepy tagalong.

Blues Brothers 2000 opens with Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) being released from prison. Once on the outside, he discovers that brother Jake (played by John Belushi in the first film) has died, along with their surrogate father figure Curtis (Cab Calloway). Through a convoluted subplot whereby Elwood becomes friends with blues-singing bartender Mighty Mack (John Goodman), picks up a musically-inclined orphan Buster (J. Evan Bonifant), and gets on the bad side of the Russian Mob, he decides that it is again time to “get the band back together”. All of that sounds familiar, save for one part. Guess which part?

Well, you can’t have a Blues Brothers movie with only one brother. So Mighty Mack becomes the Jake Blues stand-in. The first movie had Illinois Nazis. This one has the Russian Mafia. The first film had a huge police car chase. So does the second. What plot point is ‘odd man out’? The goofy little kid who tries to dress, act, and sing like his more talented and older counterparts. The brothers Blues smoked, drank, swore, stole, destroyed personal property, and ran people off roads in the first film. In no conceivable instance can I imagine those characters putting up with a little boy for more than 10 seconds.

And yet I suppose that time has softened Elwood a bit. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s softened him a lot. And I know that’s the point the movie is trying to make. His brother is dead. The man who acted as his father of sorts is dead. The orphanage where he grew up is gone. So when the convenient plot point arises where he’s confronted with the chance to take care of somebody, that’s what he does. I get that. I understand it. But Buster takes obnoxiousness to an all new level. He’s cloying, his “cool” persona is a train wreck and, in perhaps the most devastating insult one could give a character, he is wholly unnecessary. He could be taken out of the movie with minimal effort and would barely be missed. The first Blues Brothers movie portrayed Jake and Elwood as hilariously anti-establishment. The second movie shows a near broken down Elwood living in the past, apparently punishing himself for past transgressions by allowing a faux-cool punk kid to hang around and play crummy harmonica at the drop of a hat, and putting together the worst revisionist band since Sammy Hagar fronted Van Halen. Quite frankly, the majority of the awfulness is due to the “kid”. It’s been 12 years since Blues Brothers 2000 and Jake Blues is probably still spinning in his fictional grave.

3. John Connor (Edward Furlong) – Terminator 2 (1991)

There is no character more important to the Terminator mythos than John Connor. Allow me to briefly summarize the backstory – it is the year 2029 and mankind is under attack by a sentient artificial intelligence known as Skynet. Initially a defense program designed by humans, Skynet eventually becomes self-aware and decides that its superiority over humans requires it to wipe out the human race. A war begins between man and machine and things are going very badly for humans, until Skynet encounters a roadblock in its plans to take over the planet. A human leader named John Connor has pulled together a few large groups of soldiers and is making significant headway in pushing the machines back. Try as it might, Skynet is not only finding it impossible to kill John Connor, but is beginning to actually lose the war to the inferior humans.

In response to its failing battle strategies, Skynet realizes that its programming has failed to achieve its goal in killing Connor and stamping down human resistance forever, so it BUILDS A TIME MACHINE in order to send a cyborg Terminator, essentially an indestructible hitman, to go back in time to BEFORE JOHN CONNOR WAS EVEN BORN and kill his mother. That’s right – John Connor is such an unbelievable badass that armies of laser gun-wielding unstoppable robots basically throw up their hands and say “Well, this ain’t working. Now what???”

In the first film, John’s mother Sarah Connor, along with another guy who was sent back in time after the Terminator, manage to destroy it and Sarah lives on. She gives birth to John and by the time the events of Terminator 2 roll around, he is 10 years old. And every Terminator fan in the world that saw the sequel all had the same concurrent thought – “THIS is who Skynet is afraid of?”

Edward Furlong’s ten-year-old John is a sniveling hipster smartass, who regularly steals from ATM machines thanks to an unexplained, genius-level knowledge of technology (see Home Alone). To call John Connor as a child “entirely unlikeable” is akin to calling Jupiter “entirely a planet”. His mother, who saved his unborn life in the first film, is locked in a psych ward because of the events of the first film, along with the terrible knowledge of what the world might become once Skynet becomes self-aware. Not to say that fazes John much - in a conversation with a friend, John refers to her as both a “complete psycho” and a “total loser”. That’s gratitude for you, eh?

Later, John, his escaped mental patient mother, and a reprogrammed “good” Terminator are on the run from T2’s “evil” Terminator, which can shape-shift at will and possesses incredible strength, speed, and stamina. Unfortunately, being hunted by a futuristic killing machine isn’t quite enough to sway John from acting like an insufferable jackass at every opportunity, most alarmingly when Furlong’s character decides to teach expletives and Spanish putdowns to his robotic protector. This led to years of pre-teen punks arrogantly mimicking John’s “Hasta la vista, baby” line to everyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot.

It’s a bad sign when the protagonist of a billion dollar franchise is somebody that you no longer wish emerges victorious, but is somebody that you desire to have physical harm inflicted on them. At no point during T2 is it remotely possible to picture Edward Furlong’s John Connor as somebody who will be a savior to humankind in his adulthood. Instead, Connor seems much more likely to be in the early stages of an inexorable journey towards a lengthy prison sentence. What makes him easily one of the worst child characters ever is the strength of the movie that was built around him. Terminator 2 received overwhelmingly-positive reviews from critics and moviegoers alike. It won four Academy Awards. It made hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. Yet one of the first things, if not THE first thing, that people recall about this good film is how bad of a character John Connor was.

2. Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) – Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

It takes near-incalculable levels of failure to turn the popular image of one of the greatest villains in cinematic history from a death-dealing badass into a whiny, shrieky, bumbling oaf. But that’s what George Lucas and “actor” Jake Lloyd managed to do to Darth Vader in Star Wars Episode I. Perhaps no fictional backstory has ever been as hotly anticipated as the events behind Anakin Skywalker turning into the evil Darth Vader and so, in response, the Lucasfilm team filled in the blanks…by portraying Skywalker as an over-emoting petulant dolt whose legendary exploits, it turned out, transpired largely from him constantly falling ass-backwards into danger and accidentally using his genetic magical powers to untangle himself from said danger, often not even realizing how close he had just come to death. Think a young Inspector Clouseau with the Force and you’re pretty close.

To think that Edward Furlong’s portrayal of John Connor will be humanity’s last hope in 20 years is pretty difficult. To think that Jake Lloyd’s Anakin Skywalker will be a near-invincible tyrant in 20 years is impossible. In this case, and as callous as it may sound, much of the blame falls on the actor, Jake Lloyd. I admire George Lucas’ efforts in turning unknown actors into stars. After all, it worked wonders in the original trilogy. In this instance, it is a failure of titanic proportions. I can only imagine what the scenes on the cutting room floor looked like, as the scenes that did somehow make the cut show conflicting emotions on Jake Lloyd’s face at hilariously-inept levels. A scene calls for an angry outburst and Jake’s profile hasn’t got around to actually registering anger until five seconds in. A scene calls for heartfelt emotion and the line is spoken like a toy robot. And so on.

Between another example of the dreaded mop-top haircut and big puppy dog eyes, it’s fairly clear that Lucas chose Lloyd on looks alone. But it’s not as if the blame should stop with the little boy who was just doing his best. After all, Star Wars scripts aren’t exactly known for their decipherability, Shakespearean richness, or realism. A six-year-old told to hide in a one-man attack fighter during a firefight pushes buttons stupidly, accidentally flies out of the ship’s hanger, and happens to find a blast helmet to put on that fits a six-year-old.

What?

After his fighter auto-pilots him to a space battle, he flies into a huge command ship, blows some stuff up, and then escapes in the nick of time before the entire thing explodes, while shouting “Woo Hoo!!!!!” He manages this, even though he knew nothing about how to control his fighter five minutes previously.

Ugh….

The movie is littered with irritating scenarios like this. Anakin does not make a single rational decision in the entire picture. He either does something stupid and has the unbelievable good fortune to end up being ok or he’s swept along in the plot, staring stupidly as various adults order him to and fro. Millions of filmgoers watched the Star Wars prequels to see the evolution of a character. Instead they got convoluted bureaucratic grievances and the least-dramatic origins of a madman ever put to print. The only scene in which Anakin is left to his own devices is the pod-race, where Anakin’s look of what I am assuming is ‘intense concentration’ ends up looking more like the face awkward children make when their parents are posing them for a picture that they don’t want to be a part of. Hey, it’s ok Annie. That makes two of us.

1. Tim & Lex Murphy (Joseph Mazzello & Ariana Richards) – Jurassic Park (1993)

Finally we come to the nadir of the list, the Marianas Trench of terrible kid characters, the lowest of the low, the yardstick by which all other obnoxious, snot-nosed, smart-mouthed children in movies are measured. Moral know-it-alls, crybabies, attempted murder played for laughs, even the character that nearly ruined what is possibly my favorite movie of all time (Star Wars) – none of these were dire enough to be found worthy as the worst “kid” character ever. Or, as is the case, characters. I present to you THE WORST KIDS in movie history: Tim & Lex Hammond, the brother and sister duo from Jurassic Park.

One of the ways that an observer can tell that a character’s actions are properly matching its story’s tone is to put oneself in the movie. Ask yourself – “If I was in this situation, would I behave in a way that is similar to the way these characters are behaving? Or, at the very least, do I understand why they are behaving like they are?” Tim and Lex not only fail this test, but fail it miserably. They are all of the other seven entries’ worst traits rolled into one. Depending on what part of the film you are watching, they are either monumentally stupid or incomparable geniuses, either precociously self-aware or oblivious to everything happening around them, either failing to avoid trouble or almost consciously and purposefully looking for trouble. The characters suffer from that most terrible of screenwriting shortcomings – their decision-making abilities change at the convenience of the script.

As grandchildren of Jurassic Park’s founder and curator John Hammond, Tim and Lex arrive at the park’s far-flung island acting as if the entirety of its park and inhabitants is there for their own personal amusement. This is never more obvious than when they first encounter Sam Neill’s paleontologist character of Alan Grant. Tim rattles off increasingly-irritating questions at Alan before Alan finally snaps in a famous passive-aggressive moment. The scene is theoretically supposed to show Alan’s hardbitten, takes-no-crap-from-people personality, but instead ends up focusing the instinctive desire of everyone watching the movie towards hoping that Alan just punches Tim square in the face. To make the initial interactions between Alan, Tim, and Lex awkward and tense creates opportunities for character development later on. Except that Tim and Lex don’t develop. As in previous entries (see War of the Worlds), the adult finds himself constantly saving the imbecilic children from themselves.

While the characters and audience alike explore Jurassic Park, Tim and Lex’s eccentricities (i.e. stupid decisions) are mere brief sidetracks. When the dinosaurs escape and begin marauding throughout the park, their decisions and actions put people’s lives in direct danger and fly in the face of rationality. Kids can make some dumb decisions sometimes, but do any of them really make decisions THIS DUMB???

When faced with a loose Tyrannosaurus Rex sniffing around the car she is riding in, does Lexi shut off her million-watt flashlight so as to not attract attention? No, she actually shines it in his eye.

When told that the extremely loud klaxons signify that electricity will, in a matter of seconds, again be running through the previously-disabled electric fence that he is climbing on, does Tim hurry to get off the fence before he is fried? No, he stupidly stands on the highest rung, muttering something about his fear of heights. Seconds later, the newly-restored electricity “helps” him off the fence by blasting him 40 feet across the jungle.

Upon narrowly escaping death and with several carnivorous dinosaurs still on the loose, do the children decide to find a safe place to hide until rescue comes, preferably behind a strong locked door of some sort? No, they decide that they are hungry, so their next decision is to hobble over to the spacious, open-air cafeteria for some food, whereby they are quickly attacked by two velociraptors.

Amidst all of these poor choices, the characters’ realism takes another hit by their random and uncharacteristic flashes of brilliance that would make Einstein do a double-take. After being shocked half to death, Tim somehow manages to avoid attacks by the aforementioned pair of lightning-fast velociraptors by the clever use of kitchen utensils and cabinets. Even worse, and in what is probably the most egregiously-stupid scene of the entire film, the park’s command center has been left unprotected by the security system’s power grid, the head analyst (Samuel L. “Hold on to your butts” Jackson) is dead, and things look grim. Enter Lex, a self-described “computer hacker”, who in a matter of seconds breaks into the system and restores power, creating a temporary respite from the man-eaters outside. As you are assumedly reading this article on a computer, you already know how insulting and absurd such a scene is, and yet there it is on celluloid. Not only is it possibly the most excruciatingly-painful “kid saving the day” scene ever, but the smartest hacker in the real world couldn’t hope to complete that task in the allotted time on his or her best day.

Lex and Tim are the worst kid characters ever for a variety of reasons all rolled into one perfect storm of suckery. Their precociousness does not translate to intelligence, except for random times when their stupidity suddenly morphs into inconceivable inventiveness at a moment’s notice. Useful advice from the surrounding adults like “shut the flashlight off” or “get off the fence” go unnoticed by the children, who, although they are clearly wrong to ignore what the adults say, suffer little to no consequences as a result. The screenwriters were certainly no help either - apparently not content with allowing Tim and Lex to defy reality and cheat death on multiple occasions on an island crawling with bloodthirsty dinosaurs, they aggravatingly instilled in Lex the presence of mind to save a variety of intelligent adults who hold a variety of doctorates by pretending to be able to “hack” a sophisticated security grid in a matter of seconds.

Adults are dying all around them. Computer analysts are killed, the scum-sucking lawyer is eaten, and the expert hunter is out-hunted by a pair of raptors. And yet the kids live on, a spit in the face of sensibility. There have been many bothersome child characters throughout film, from Max Reede to Anakin Skywalker, but Lex and Tim Hammond are the worst. Ever.

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