Family Plan (1997)

Absolutely Fantastic

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Alright, I'm going to give this a 10 out of 10, just to counter some of the ridiculous reviews that this movie got on IMDb. It looks like some people saw this movie with the wrong expectations, really. If you expect something like Naked Gun or Airplane (which are great Nielsen-movies too, by the way), sure, you'll be disappointed. Cause the joke-density isn't nearly as high, all jokes are PG-rated and thus less appealing to the more mature audience and Nielsen's character sometimes even seems to know what he's talking about rather than acting like a complete clown.But that's because Family Plan is a whole different movie! It's a family movie, not one of those slapstick that we all know Nielsen from! And sure, I know movies in this genre aren't popular with the 'serieus film critics', but I enjoyed it! I really did! The whole cast is showing a lot of enthusiasm and Trevor Morgan and Zachary Browne are doing a great job at portraying two mischievous kids who still have their hearts in the right place.Family Plan is really a movie that you can just watch with a smile on your face the whole time, rather than being buried under an avalanche of jokes. I like the fact that it never goes slapstick and that there's enough space for the touching story of two boys looking for a home. So what that the story isn't that original, and that it's not Nielsen's best work. I enjoyed it from the beginning to the end, and that's what you should judge a movie on!

I thought it was very similar to Rent-A-Kid. They had the same characters, and type of story. Leslie Neilsen made me laugh, and so did the guy who played Matt. But I think that they could have added more to it.

This is one of Leslie Nielsen's worst movies ever, even though he's not really the main character. I laughed about 0.4 times during this dragging crapfest that seemed to last forever and made me question why I enjoy movies at all. The studio was wise to make it a straight-to-video release because it would have made about $40 in theaters.

...but the rest of that one isn't really something memorable. I mean...the jokes ain't funny, the story is thin and the actors aren't that great, too (especially Judge Reinold can act a lot better than he does here). But there are these dialogues involving Leslie Nielsen - and the combination of the character he plays, always repeating sentences, and the whole spirit of the great comedian Nielsen made me laugh not only once. To be true: If you want to see a really funny comedy - skip this one. But if you like to see some really senseless entertainment by the undisputed king of senseless entertainment, this one's not too bad.