mediocre, second rate Home Alone rippoff

“Getting Even with Dad” may have worked but it continually plays like a product more than a movie. As in everytime you feel like it’s finally getting to something authentic, it instead tries to do something else that’s either been focus-grouped, contrived, or cliched into the script by screenwriters who more or less seem to be working by algorithm.


It stars Ted Danson as an ex-con named Ray who has recently been released from prison and already has an idea for a next big score- a heist of some gold coins that will be more than enough to fund his dream of opening up a bakery. What he doesn’t expect is for his son Timmy (Macaulay Culkin) to show up at his door. His mother is dead and he’s been in the guardianship of an aunt for the last three years and now it’s Ray’s turn to be a dad.


11 year old Tim, it’s mentioned, is a genius, which in a movie like this means he’s so much smarter than the adults taking care of him. Ray and his buddies do the job but are surprised to discover that Tim has gotten wind of their plan, hidden the coins and will use them as leverage to get Ray to be an attentive parent for once. He’ll have no choice but to do the things Tim wants him to do if he ever wants his nest egg back.


There won’t be much love involved in dad being blackmailed like this, and of course, dad will also try to match wits to get the kid to give up the coins. It’s a cynical relationship which Culkin and Danson have been tasked with eventually trying to find some warmth in and Danson, wearing a Mel Gibson in “Lethal Weapon” mullet of hair, at least tries to add some sincerity and Culkin can be sweet when he wants to be.


But the film has also gone to great lengths to make him the crafty Kevin McCallister type again and, and in a way, he becomes less the poor, neglected child the more he seems to be orchestrating and manipulating everyone around him.


Plus mostly what we get isn’t so much father son bonding as scene after scene of upbeat musical montages, games, roller coasters, and the like. It’s there to help us ignore anything real and just go along with the fun but how long can that go on for without a shred of any real substance. I made it about an hour.


Danson’s two bumbling henchmen (Saul Rubinek, Gailard Sartain) are often either along for the ride or the film spends way too much time cutting to them and their efforts to find the coins themselves. This usually results in second rate “Home Alone” scenes of artless, predictable slapstick or just scenes that feel creepy and even abrasive. No thought has been put into anything- it’s mostly just shouting and violent actions.


And the film also seems to believe it needs a love story, so it adds Glenne Headley’s cop into the mix. She’s supposed to be trailing Danson but instead falls in love with him and Timmy, which is just an embarrassing role for any actress to have to play.


This being a Culkin led flick, he of course is orchestrating and trying to save those he loves through his wits all the way up to the end but being that he does most of it off camera, I think even his fans would find this one boring. The father-son happy ending is here, though even that feels more like plot formula than ever really earned.