Problem Child (film) - Plot

Plot

The film opens with a woman leaving a bassinet on the porch of a fancy home; the baby, named Junior, promptly urinates on the woman who picks him up. From there, he is repeatedly discarded at various homes throughout many years by guardians who have grown tired of his destructive behavior—which includes demolishing a mobile home with a bulldozer in retaliation for his favorite toys being stepped on—until he is eventually deposited at a Catholic orphanage, where he continues to wreak havoc on the strict nuns.

Ben Healy (John Ritter) is a pleasant but brow-beaten husband working for his father Big Ben (Jack Warden), a tyrannical sporting goods dealer who is running for Mayor. Recently, he has discovered that his father intends to sell his store and the land to a Japanese company rather than leave it to him; when he asks why, Big Ben reveals that it is because his son "stubbornly refuses to follow example" by adopting an honest work ethic instead of a ruthless drive to usurp. He would love to have a son, but his selfish, gold-digging wife Flo (Amy Yasbeck) has been unable to conceive. Ben approaches less-than-scrupulous adoption agent Igor Peabody (Gilbert Gottfried) with his dilemma, and Igor presents them with a cute 7-year-old boy, Junior (Michael Oliver).

However, Junior is hardly a model child; apparently mean-spirited and incorrigible, he leaves a path of serious destruction in his wake, and is even pen pals with Martin Beck (Michael Richards), a notorious serial killer called the Bow Tie Killer. Junior throws the family cat at Big Ben, who then ends up falling down the stairs, and the house catches on fire. Junior messes up a camping trip with the neighbors by urinating in the fire, and manipulating a practical joke played on the kids by their father, Roy. He makes Ben believe a bear is attacking the campground when it is really Roy in a bear suit. Ben hits Roy with a frying pan. Junior then goes on to terrorize his neighbor's birthday party, after Lucy, the snobby birthday girl, bans him from the magic show. Junior however wants revenge and sneaks a lawn sprinkler in her room, cuts off another girl's ponytails with scissors, puts a frog in the punch bowl, replaces Pinata candy with pickles including the juice, throws her presents in the pool and places fire crackers in her birthday cake making it blow up.

Ben seeing Junior is upset gives him his most precious possession, a dried prune that belonged to his grandfather (he thought it resembled Roosevelt), telling him it signifies a bond between two people. Finally, he displays his effective but unethical method for winning in Little League where he strikes rival players in the crotch with a baseball bat. Ben is having serious doubts about Junior, and decides to take him back to the orphanage. However, upon hearing he was returned thirty times, he decides to keep and love him, something no one has ever done. However, Junior becomes upset that his parents were going to send him back and despite Ben stating that he will not, drives Flo's car into her father-in-law's store, and Ben's bank account is wiped out to pay for the damage. He is on the verge of cracking until Beck arrives at the house, posing as Junior's uncle, and decides to kidnap his faithful correspondent, along with Flo for ransom.

While Ben first sees this as good riddance to his browbeating wife and the trouble making Junior, he soon notices signs that Junior is not the monster he appeared. In his drawer is the prune carefully wrapped up and through a series of pictures he drew, he depicts Flo and Big Ben as deformed monsters with hostile surroundings, but depicted Ben as a happy person in a pleasant background, revealing that he really did value him as a father figure all along. Ben, realizing that Junior's behavior was simply a response to how he himself had been treated, and that it has simply been bad luck that he has had to deal with too many cruel and selfish people at such a young age, undertakes a rescue mission to get him back from Beck.

He then confronts his father (who is preparing to make a TV appearance for his mayoral campaign) to loan him the ransom money. When he callously refuses, Ben activates the camera that puts Big Ben unknowingly on live TV, where he ends up revealing his true nature on the news, even mooning the camera. Afterward, Ben steals his neighbor Roy's car and "Super Dad" hat and goes to rescue Junior.

Ben catches up with Beck and Junior at the circus. Junior is rescued after escaping from Beck through a trapeze act and calls Ben Dad for the first time. Beck drives away, but the Healys are now on his trail. After a collision, Flo (who was stuffed in a suitcase), is thrown into the air and lands in the back of a farm truck loaded with pigs. Beck is arrested, but while being led away, he grabs an officers side arm and fires at Junior, but Ben shields Junior and takes the shot. Thinking Ben is dead, Junior apologizes for all the bad things he did and tells him he will never be naughty again and he loves him. Ben wakes up and tells Junior he loves him, too, and realizes the bullet ricocheted off his good-luck prune he was holding in his pocket. Junior asks Ben if he really believed that he was going to stop misbehaving, but Ben tells Junior he wants him to be himself. Junior then removes his bow tie and throws it over the bridge perhaps as a sign that he has changed his ways not to be like Martin, but be himself. Junior is then carried home by his new father.

The film ends with Flo in the truck looking out from the suitcase, only to be met by the rump of a pig as it defecates, and then the credits roll with the movie's theme song.