Reasons why “Parental Guidance” is terrible

By Sofía Cárdenas,
HUB Staff Writer–

Let’s just get it out of the way. Viewers should watch anything humanly possibly so long as they avoid “Parental Guidance.”

Most adults I adore kids. Some may see a movie about kids and think, “Well, at least I can see a cute little boy or girl refuse to eat their veggies.” “Parental Guidance” is robbed of that sense of innocence.

The plot begins with two charismatic grandparents who are asked to come care for their up-tight-daughters kids for a week. The grandfather, Artie, played by Billy Crystal, has just been laid off from his job as the baseball announcer for the Fresno Grizzlies. His wife, Diane, is a retired weather woman who becomes excited at this opportunity to level up out of her current role as “the other grandparents.”

On arriving at their daughter’s home, Artie and Diane realize that the little girl they raised is now raising children of her own—and in the weirdest of ways. Their daughter never tells their children “no;” instead, she encourages “consider the consequences,” along with other “new-age” parenting techniques. Her children eat tofu and do not tolerate any contact between food items. The oldest daughter believes she will play one day at Julliard. The middle son suffers from a mild stutter. The youngest son, Barker, is just the odd-ball. However adorable the casting might have been, these three kids are little jerks.

Harper, Tuner and Barker are being raised as spoiled brats, and when complications in each of their lives arises, I found it very hard to care. I did not care that Harper had a crush on a boy but was new in a school and shy. I did not care that Barker couldn’t eat his dinner because the food was touching or that his only friend was an imaginary kangaroo. I cared, I guess a little, that Turner’s speech therapist was sort of a quack, but that might only be because I have a relative who is a speech therapist.

Artie and his wife Diane deserve better attention and more respect from these kids but were instead greeted with the nick name Arty-Farty and the perception that Diane was just a has-been California-beach-tart.

However terrible the movie was, Billy Crystal’s jokes made it bearable. The children, however, were so intolerably rude, selfish and disrespectful, that each one of them sets the movie back.