Dennis Dugan
Piccola peste

The 1990 film directed by Dennis Dugan features Junior, a seven-year-old boy who was abandoned at birth. Due to his personality, he is sent back by as many as thirty families to the orphanage. Junior, between inappropriate photos and stews hanging from the ceiling, exasperates the nuns, who want to get rid of him. Meanwhile, the sterile couple formed by Ben Healy (the late John Ritter) and his wife Flo (Amy Yasbeck) attempts adoption, after her initial opposition. Junior, through the deceit of Dr. Peabody (Gilbert Gottfried), the director of the orphanage, is adopted, and the orphanage celebrates as soon as the little one exits the gate, with balloons in the air. Junior will behave very poorly, between camping, a birthday party, and a baseball game, pushing Ben to his limit, but he has no intention of taking him back to the orphanage, the place where Junior had written to the "bow-tie killer" (Michael Richards) after seeing a news report in which he identified with him as "misunderstood," to the point of wearing a bow tie himself. Marty, the killer, escapes from prison by strangling a doctor and pretending to be him at the exit, to meet his future partner. Meanwhile, Flo, who has used Junior more for social purposes than maternal affection, begins to no longer tolerate him, and with her, also Big Ben (Jack Warden), Ben's father, candidate for mayor of Cold River. Marty arrives at Junior's house but gets angry when he finds out he's a seven-year-old and not an adult (the line "I'll be eight in two weeks" doesn't change much about the substance...). However, he will make up for it with a night of sex with Flo under the eyes of her husband (now indebted for the damages done by the little one at the father's store driving a car without looking at the road), and escapes with her and Junior, leaving Ben with a giant message demanding a hundred thousand dollars in ransom. Ben is initially happy to have gotten rid of his family, but then discovers in a drawer the dried plum he gave Junior at a girl's party (Colby Kline) telling him that if he kept it, it meant he loved him, and decides to go get him back. Marty ties Flo and then locks her in a suitcase and in the trunk, and behaves badly with Junior. Ben and Marty meet at the circus, after Ben ruins his father's election campaign by sending a compromising video showing his bare behind, and taking the hundred thousand dollars. Ben throws the backpack with the sum, but Marty immediately grabs the kid, who, however, kicks him and runs away. Through circus acrobatics, the small one calls for the first time "dad" the one he had always called "Mr. Healy." After a chase with gunfire (which Ben stole from camping friend Roy along with the car), in which Flo first flies onto Ben's car then into a cattle truck, Marty is arrested but manages to shoot Ben, who is saved by his father's campaign rosette and the now infamous dried plum. Ben and Junior leave Flo, and Junior, feeling loved for the first time, throws the bow tie into the sky, symbol of misunderstanding.

A two-and-a-half-star film, there's the story of the misunderstood, and thus the film takes on a melancholic and more substantial tone. The rest are all gags, truth be told not irresistible, but certainly not too vulgar as in the second episode.