The movie focuses on the misadventures that befall Theodore "Beaver/Beav" Cleaver(Cameron Finley) and his relation to his older brother Wally (Erik von Detten), father Ward (Christopher McDonald), and mother June (Janine Turner).
1997's Leave it to Beaver is one of many TV to film adaptations the decade saw. Some adaptations such as The Addams Family, The Fugitive, Maverick, or Mission: Impossible were solid films that adapted the shows while justifying themselves as films in their own right, but others such as Car 54 Where are You?, The Beverly Hillbillies, McHale's Navy, or The Flintstones were either tired retreads content to spin their wheels or missed the mark on their series. Leave it to Beaver adapts the 1957 to 1963 television series of the same name that did have some notable milestones in TV (such as the first scene featuring a toilet in the second episode) but it portrayed a very idealized vision of the 1950s middle class that really only existed for a small subset of Americans at the time. While Leave it to Beaver has had staying power with syndication, a reunion movie, and a sequel series in the 80s, it's honestly a show that never spoke to me because it never resonated with me especially in its rather naïve in hindsight view that children's only real source of tension comes from when they misbehave or engage in mischief with the family life shown as unrealistically idealized. The show Leave it to Beaver really can't be critiqued from a modern viewpoint because it's so ingrained in that era of Father Knows Best or My Three Sons and I always gravitated towards either the more gimmicky sitcoms like I Dream of Jeanie, Bewitched or Get Smart, or the outliers like The Honeymooners that broke from the mold established by shows like Leave it to Beaver. A adaptation of Leave it to Beaver just wouldn't have worked in the 90s unless of course you reframed it in a manner similar to The Brady Bunch movies did, and of course they don't.
Leave it to Beaver 1997 sets its tone from the outset with a lot of the same cartoonish "mess" and slapstick humor that defined most post Home Alone family films of the 1990s and with Brian Levant of The Flintstones adaptation writing the script, it falls pretty much in line with the quality seen in The Flintstones with its flabby directionless narrative that feels like several condensed episodes of the TV series stapled end to end. Outside of maybe modernizing the familial dynamic to contemporary times there's not really all that much you can do with Leave it to Beaver that wasn't already being done by the numerous Home Alone inspired clones of the day. I will say that the actors are all perfectly fine with Christopher McDonald having some "okay" moments here and there when the script and direction aren't forcing him to mug, but the rest of the movie is so aggressively bouncy in its tone that it becomes pretty aggravating. There's also a bit involving Adam Zolotin as Eddie Haskell, Jr. Where he shows his stalkerish behavior over a girl he likes that the movie seems blissfully unaware of how creepy it is.
Leave it to Beaver is another bad 90s film adaptation of an old TV show. It's not particularly funny or charming with the only real laugh coming from the fact Universal signed the cast for two sequels that never ended up happening. Some of the actors try to rise above the hackneyed shenanigans and bounciness of the movie, but it's just not enough to save this banal and obnoxious film.
