Metacritic-Rezensionen

Dugan has a brisk, imaginative comic style; he sets up his gags well, so that there's still some surprise in the punch lines when they come.

Every time Problem Child gets an interesting edge, it loses it.

Dugan can`t find a tone that allows him to preserve the shock of the gags while minimalizing their physical painfulness.

Problem Child has moments, or perhaps instants, of misanthropic satire. There also are stroboscopically brief flashes of psychological irony or cleverness. [30 July 1990, p.D8]

A dark domestic comedy that continuously shirks the courage of its convictions.

There are jokes in this story of a 7-year-old adoptee from Heck, but most of them are funny despite the clumsiness of their telling. The rest aren't funny at all. [1 Aug 1990, p.D7]

They've jacked this loud, lame shrieker of a movie up to the highest decibels, both aural and visual, and rammed it in our faces with almost numbing aplomb.

With jokes this lame you won't have to worry as much about your children getting any bad ideas.

As directed by the actor Dennis Dugan, everyone seems to be yelling their lines and making huge hand gestures instead of acting.

The film marks an atrocious bigscreen debut for actor and episodic TV director Dennis Dugan.