It’s time for a classic film about what happens when all of the normal babysitters are out of town. It’s time to call in the last resort and this will either be a complete success or a total mess. There is rarely any in between when it comes to that. The movie ends up being pretty fun and was better than I expected it would be. The title’s far from perfect but makes for an all around entertaining film.

The movie starts out by introducing us to Maizy, the oldest of 3 kids and the most rebellious. She always has a bad attitude and nothing ever makes her happy. It seems like she even takes pride in always having an awful time. Well, her parents have to head off due to a medical emergency so now Uncle Buck will be the head of the household. Unfortunately for Maizy, Buck knows how to handle troublemakers. Who will win in this clash of wills?

One of the strengths of the film is in how secure Uncle Buck is. He doesn’t let any of the many jokes and wisecracks get to him. Maizy tries her passive aggressive insults at him and he just laughs them off. They clash several times and he wins virtually all of the encounters. The only time Maizy scores a win, Buck doesn’t panic and just accepts the defeat. He was determined to do a good job of watching over the kids and he succeeded.

Buck has been out of a job for a while and tends to be a bit of slob but he didn’t let that stop him as the babysitter. While Buck may not know the best ways to handle things, he does his best and comes up with creative ways to make it all work. He also cooks actual meals for the kids rather than just ordering take-out or something. What I’m getting at here is that he put in a lot of real effort and that’s part of what makes him an endearing character.

By the end of the film he has to make a lot of difficult decisions and while Buck hesitates, he makes the right calls in the end. In particular he was good about chasing Bug away and keeping him from causing too much damage to Maizy. At the end of the day it is up to her to really make the problem go away though as Buck can’t be there 24/7. Unfortunately Maizy doesn’t have a lot of sense and is easily the worst character here.

She is basically willing to do anything in order to spite Buck which is a terrible approach. Her rebellious phase went really far with how she was using Bugs as a means to an end. She really knew that he wasn’t a good guy but just kept doing whatever she wanted even when it meant leaving her two younger siblings alone. She was completely irresponsible to the max. Definitely a character who was annoying the entire time.

There’s not much to say about Bug other than the fact that he’s basically just a creep. It was nice to see Buck interrogating him the whole time and really putting some fear into him. Bug needs to be fearful so he doesn’t keep on messing around. I like to think that Buck scared him straight here. Meanwhile Maizy’s two siblings don’t get as much of a role as you might expect. Initially I though that all 3 characters would get big roles but this was really Maizy’s film by the end of it.

Miles and Tia were quickly on board with Buck so I appreciated how they adapted to the situation. They are a bit too young to be true rebels and mostly just seemed to have been copying their older sister. I think they will be in a better situation now. In general the kids tend to have a bit of a potty mouth though and it’s where the film’s script tends to be at its weakest. The lines sometimes feel rather forced like it’s just there to be shocking without really adding to the story. There are some good jokes in here too though so you could say the film has its ups and downs in that area.

The film tries to squeeze in a romance plot as well as Buck and Chanice have been going through some issues. She wants to get married already while he continues to put up resistance. It feels like one of those forced issues and I’m more on her side here. Either you are going to commit or you aren’t but there’s no sense in dragging it out. She also gets messed with by Maizy so I can’t even get upset at her for going off the rails later on. The whole dancing scene was a rough look for Buck.

Generally speaking I’d say it’s okay to dance with anyone, however since it was obvious that the neighbor was trying to seduce him, Buck had to get out of there. There aren’t any good excuses for staying there and allowing her to play these games with him. Ideally things will go well for him and Chanice now but I don’t think the film really needed this plot. I felt like it was only there to give Maizy some ammo for her singular win. Otherwise she really would not have had anything on Buck.

Overall, Uncle Buck is a pretty good film. The first area where it succeeds is in being funny. That’s a super important factor for this kind of film and so it really needed to succeed there. Outside of that the pacing is good and Buck works well as the main character. Maizy’s just annoying enough where she almost starts to drag this down with her scenes but fortunately, they aren’t quite long enough to sabotage it. If you like comedy films that aren’t afraid to get rather crazy then I would recommend this film. By the end of the film you’ll see how Buck was a better parent than the actual couple who ran off.

Overall 7/10