Problem Child/Recap/2nd Movie

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Ben Healy and his son, Junior, move from Cold River to Mortville, Oregon, a quiet, peaceful community, apparently as a way to start their lives all over again. Ben is initially sad to be leaving Cold River until Junior reminds him that everyone there has been horrible to him his whole life including his father and friends. They then leave knocking over the welcome sign as they leave. Before they arrive at their new house, Junior sees a girl rollerskating on the sidewalk with a balloon. He pops it with his sling shot and laughs at her as he go by. Ben and Junior arrive at their new house and moments later dozens of women line up in their front yard, all of them wanting to date Ben. He takes two of them on dates: Junior ruins both by calling one woman's ex-husband and tells him the restaurant where she and Ben are having their date and electrocutes the other by rewiring the door bell. Meanwhile, Big Ben arrives to live with Ben and Junior when he loses all his money in a bad investment.

When Junior starts his first day of third grade, he sees that Mr. Peabody (Gilbert Gottfried) is the principal of his new school. Mr. Peabody panics at the sight of Junior and promptly promotes him to the sixth grade. He gets on school bully Murph's bad side when he tapes him to the chalkboard. Murph retaliates by trying to drop the school's satellite on Junior but it misses and hits Ben instead, knocking him out. When he comes to, he sees school nurse Annie Young (Amy Yasbeck) and becomes smitten with her. Around the same time, LaWanda DuMore (Laraine Newman) the richest lady in Mortville takes a liking to him, much to Junior's chagrin. She vows to have him at any cost. While Ben and Junior are gone for the day, she comes in and decorates the house to impress Ben. When they are in school, Junior and a girl named Trixie start tormenting each other and she gets him into trouble. Ben starts to think Junior is acting out because he feels neglected so he takes Junior to the carnival. There, Junior finds that he is not tall enough to ride "The Crazy Dance". While Ben goes off to get a candy apple to cheer him up, Junior sabotages the ride, making the passengers vomit everywhere, after being taunted by Murph and Trixie (who has put lifts on her shoes to make her look taller).

Junior, who strongly despises LaWanda, ruins the dinner she made by putting live cockroaches in the food. Afterwards, she tells him that when she is his stepmother she will send him to boarding school in Baghdad. He tries to tell Ben that LaWanda is bad but he doesn't believe him. While at a school function, Ben sees the puppet show go awry and thinks Junior is to blame. He stops it but is surprised to see it was Trixie ruining it. It is also revealed that Annie is her mother. Annie rushes to take Trixie home: Ben tries to tell her he understands what it is like raising a problem child and thinks they can help one another. She tells him she likes him but if they date, Trixie's behavior would only get worse. He proposes to LaWanda believing she is the only woman who will marry him.

By a chance meeting in a pizza restaurant, Ben, Annie, Junior, and Trixie have dinner together and have a good time even after the food fight the kids start with Mr. Peabody and his girlfriend gets them thrown out. Junior and Trixie apologize and decide their parents should date. Junior begins to try to stop the wedding by switching LaWanda's blood sample with that of a rabid dog. While celebrating her engagement to Ben, she gets cake icing on her face, which bears a striking resemblance to foaming at the mouth (a symptom of rabies). As a result, she is handcuffed by animal control officers and sent to the hospital for observation. With her in the hospital, Junior overhears a patient in the room across from her saying he wants to hold the world record for the world's longest nose. Junior sabotages LaWanda's plastic surgery by switching the patient files, resulting in her receiving a gigantic nose – this is Junior attempting to make her so ugly Ben will not marry her. Unfortunately, she uses her funds to get last minute surgery to undo the damage. At the altar, Junior and Trixie's work pays off and Ben finally realizes that Annie is the one for him. Big Ben decides to marry (the now single) LaWanda while Junior and Trixie use explosives to splatter both of them with the wedding cake.