Since Bob Saget passed away five months ago, I remember watching this when I was younger and enjoying it quite a bit.
I did a random YouTube search after the announcement of his death to see what was available on this movie and surprisingly the whole film is now available to view on YouTube in one part for free.
Wanting to see if it held up I rewatched. Some of the jokes from Saget are still pretty funny and considering this is a low budget family TV movie they got a pretty impressive cast including Saget, David Graf from the Police Academy franchise, Stuart Pankin from Fatal Attraction, Troy Evans from Ace Ventura Pet Detective Heidi Swedberg from Seinfeld, and Brian Bonsall from Family Ties and Brian Levinson from Matilda.
But in spite of a couple of laughs and a pretty impressive cast, the movie has a couple big flaws.
For starters most of the adults with the slight exception of Evans as the Scoutmaster and Pankin somewhat are pretty unlikeable people and we have to start off with the most unlikeable of them all, none other than the main star himself Bob Saget.
As a kid I thought Saget's character was pretty funny with all of his sarcastic wisecracks. As an adult some of them are still funny but the problem with Saget's character is that he is a complaining jerk who puts everyone and everything down.
Even the character of the enemy played by Graf I can sympathize with a bit more. Yeah he is an arrogant jerk and not someone who I would ideally want to spend time with but you can understand why he hates Saget and antagonizes him.
He tries even being nice to Saget but he just responds by being a sarcastic jerk.
Saget's role here seems like the kind of part Woody Allen or Albert Brooks would have played very early in their careers, but both of those guys in comparison would probably be able to squeeze a tiny ounce of likeability into a character like this.
Bonsall as the son is probably the most likeable character in the movie though he constantly whines that his dad is embarrassing him that at some points he is almost as annoying as Saget. It's also rather concerning that the kid character is more likeable and level headed than any of the adults.
Saget does become more likeable at the end but by then he has been such a jerk the whole movie that it is hard to accept him as such.
Some of the writing is also pretty bad with a lot of plot holes and things that dont make sense.
I am not expecting an Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay this is just a TV movie after all but surely the writers could have paid more attention to some details and have their script make more sense. Even some Full House episodes are written with more cleverness and wit than this.
If you liked Saget on Full House, this is probably worth one rewatch for nostalgia, but dont expect anything great.
If the characters were more likeable and logical and if the writing were a bit more sharp I think this would hold up better.
As it stands it's not a bad movie but a very middling one especially by made for TV standards.
Worth a watch for Saget, the cast and some funny lines but unlike reruns of Full House this will not have you wanting to do a repeat view. There is definitely a lot worse out there in terms of TV family movies, but there is also a lot better.
