Comedy as white bread, easily the worst out of John Hughes' 3 classic films. It's an uninspired story with a dynamic between the main characters we've seen a million times before, and their arc is executed in the most predictable way imaginable. The comedy leans heavily towards the cheesy side; just way too many dumb, obvious moments that really missed the mark for me. Steve Martin lays it on way too thick, which is also one of the reasons why I could never get into _Only Murders in the Building_. John Candy, on the other hand, is quite decent and got a few laughs out of me. Still, I find most of its choices too middlebrow and lame, as is often the case with mainstream comedies. It's like Hughes falls victim here to some of the things he omitted so well from previous outings. Even his filmmaking is quite weak; the interesting punctuation in the camerawork and editing from _Ferris Bueller_ is nowhere to be found here, and the use of score/music is maybe the worst thing about the movie. If you want to look at movies that are way too eager to guide the viewer emotionally at every turn, this is one of the worst offenders when it comes to that. There's just not a lot about this that I can praise, though it's far from the worst thing I've seen. Ah well, maybe I should try this again in a few decades to see the charm in it. Shouldn't be impossible as I'll probably have everything erased from my memory in a few days.

3.5/10