Among movie lovers, there’s a simple phrase that can instantly inspire dread: “child star.” Sure, some child stars can deliver great performances, but most are bad actors cast to be precocious little stinkers. And if that comedy falls flat, you’re left with a movie that…well…stinks!
Perhaps nobody understands that better than Michael Oliver. He was the star of Problem Child and Problem Child 2, and film critics absolutely savaged those movies. Just like that, what could have been the launchpad for a successful career (like what Home Alone was for Macaulay Culkin) instead destroyed his career prospects, eventually causing him to leave Hollywood altogether.
Just what is this former problem child up to, and what misadventures has he gotten into after leaving filmmaking far behind? Keep reading to find out!
Problem Child featured some major Hollywood stars
Despite playing the title character, Michael Oliver is probably the least well-known actor in Problem Child. After all, he was a relatively unknown child star, and this was intended as his breakout role. Considering that this movie and its sequel effectively killed Oliver’s Hollywood dreams, though, it’s fair to say that the breakout never really happened.
Despite that, Problem Child included some other major actors, ones who would only become even bigger names after the movie’s release. John Ritter and his future wife Amy Yasbeck played the parents of the titular problem child and comedian Gilbert Gottfried appeared in the film well before he was a household name. Even future Seinfeld star Michael Richards appears, making this a star-studded film…one that just so happens to be critically reviled.
The child star at the heart of an infamous movie
If you’re an 80s or 90s child, you might have some very fond memories of Problem Child. And that may be enough to make you question why we keep referring to it as a very terrible movie. And the answer is really quite simple: this is one of the most critically-reviled movies ever made.
On the film review site Rotten Tomatoes, Problem Child has a zero percent. No, that’s not a typo…out of all the professional critics who reviewed this film, not one of them would recommend that anyone watch it. On the site, the critical consensus reads as follows: “Mean-spirited and hopelessly short on comic invention, Problem Child is a particularly unpleasant comedy, one that’s loaded with manic scenery chewing and juvenile pranks.”
Despite being so infamously bad, the first Problem Child made enough money at the box office to warrant a sequel. Unfortunately, that movie and its star, young Michael Oliver, were soon part of a nasty behind-the-scenes lawsuit.