Famille à l'essai

This wasn't a particularly good movie, but it wasn't awful either. Incredibly and sometimes charmingly predictable--like a Leave It to Beaver episode--Rent-a-Kid is neither very interesting nor particularly memorable, but it's pretty harmless. It's typical made-for-TV fare, really, devoid of well-developed characters or relationships, and in the end everybody is a good guy. But it doesn't insult one's intelligence and the kids are fairly cute--unlike the typical obnoxious, irritatingly precocious brats that usually plague this sort of movie. Rent-a-Kid makes for entertainment only if you're really bored, but at least you won't feel worse about the world after having watched it.

I can say this movie is clearly underrated. Maybe my age, my memories, childhood etc... It is cute, it has good sense of humor (Leslie Nielsen!!!), and don't expect great plots, huge surprises, this is a family movie which provides humor for everybody in the family.

I really feel it has nice interpretation of kids' difficulties who have troubles with having integration to family life, and well, I am pretty sure I will be somewhat clueless when it comes to dealing with kids like the parents.

Brilliant movie? Not. Worth to see? Of course, give it a chance. Don't get fooled by the low rating.

Cliff Haber runs the Mid-Valley Children's Home, and he needs a vacation. For the 10 days prior to Thanksgiving, he turns the operation over to his father Harry, who runs a store that rents just about everything a person could need for a kitchen right down to glassware.

Harry observes that the merchandise is not moving at his son's operation. While eating in a Mexican restaurant, he overhears a couple discussing the pros and cons of adoption and gets a brilliant idea: let people try out kids for a period of time and see if they are cut out to be parents. Cliff thinks it's a stupid idea, but while he is gone, Harry does it anyway.

The Lachmans want to adopt Molly, but she wants to stay with her mischievous brothers Kyle, who wants to be a surgeon and is always practicing, and Brandon, who loves to makes up stories, often scaring his sister even though he loves her. Harry decides to let Russ and Valerie, who live in a luxury apartment building with a doorman, try out the three Ward children for 10 days. The results are pretty much what you would expect, and quite hilarious at times. Oh, yes, and the kids were promised a dog.

Some opportunities for laughs: Kyle wants to go on a field trip to a hospital. And Russ and Valerie discover a long-lost letter written by Abraham Lincoln, and Brandon is fascinated by the Civil War. I also enjoyed the scene with the fantasy couple Mr. and Mrs. Nicely, whose mansion resembled an amusement park but had one door kids were NEVER supposed to open.

Leslie Nielsen was very funny at times, though not in quite the same way as in 'Airplane!' and the 'Naked Gun' series. Some of his delivery didn't quite work for me--for example, Harry had an annoying habit of repeating things he or someone else had already said to make them sound better. But he was hilarious when he would describe the children and the transactions as if the kids were his merchandise.

Christopher Lloyd was quite good as the kindly doorman Lawrence. Tabitha Lupien may have given the movie's best performance as 5-year-old Molly, and she and Sherry Miller (as Molly's prospective Mom) were quite good together. The other kids were good too.

There was plenty of physical comedy, and nothing to concern parents. The closest this movie ever got to PG: Russ and Valerie were 'interrupted', but of course younger kids wouldn't know what they were getting ready to do in bed.

This was fluff and somewhat predictable, but it was the kind of movie I enjoy.

The movie is an interesting fictional story with both happy and sad situations. It's a story of three sibling orphans that get a chance for adoption. One of the kids has a tendency to not always tell the full truth, and the renter parents start out reluctant to believe anything the child says. The renter parents never had kids of their own, and do not have the parental skills to work with a child with this habit. Part way through the movie, the rental parents begin to value a material item over the children. How sad that this analogy often occurs in real life. I remember watching this movie as a youngster, and I would love to watch it again if it ever was shown on TV. I would not recommend purchasing the DVD, as the video quality is unwatchable. It's as if the DVD was a poor transfer from a blurry VHS tape.

Obnoxious Yuppies rent three kids to see if they will like being parents. Suspension of disbelief is required, of course, because in real life there is a shortage of non-dysfunctional kids to be adopted. The dad is a real jerk and the mom is very likeable. Good for kids.