Dennis the Menace

Plot summary

This movie follows an elderly man who is consistently annoyed by the antics of his five-year-old neighbour, which causes him to feel resentment toward the child.

This is made worse when he is tasked with babysitting him while his parents are out of town for work and nobody else wants to watch him.

Despite his continued annoyance toward the child, he soon has a change of heart after the young boy is kidnapped while in his care and rushes to rescue him before it is too late.

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Jeff’s take

I have to admit that I sometimes have a hard time picking up on the plot of any movie I watch until about halfway through or even near the end.

This movie is completely different, though. The cause of the main issue throughout this movie is so obvious that even a child can point it out.

I think a lot of the issues in this movie stem from the poor parenting skills of the people who live on that kid’s street.

Clearly, nobody ever taught him basic rules.

He was obviously never taught that it’s not okay to invade the home of your neighbour without permission and play pranks on him when he’s trying to sleep, or allow half of the children in the neighbourhood to play a game of hide-and-seek outside after dark.

While I don’t condone the response of the elderly man throughout this film, he is understandably justified in his annoyance toward the kid’s actions.

What makes this worse is that the child never really gets reprimanded to a reasonable extent for his actions.

I know that some people may say, “He’s just a kid.” However, nobody seems to realize that taking it easy on him by giving him punishments that are less severe than the crimes committed would dictate isn’t teaching him anything.

He is just going to learn that it’s okay to continue what he’s doing, and soon enough he may end up getting into trouble if the wrong person crosses paths with him and he tries those things on them.

Another thing I couldn’t get over is the type of dialogue some of the children used throughout this film.

They were discussing matters that should only apply to adults, such as marriage, owning a house and even intimacy, with little explanation from adults that those types of topics should only be brought up by them.

This is something I could not accept throughout this film.

Basically, all the parents in this movie just allow their kids to get away with whatever they want without consequences, and this really got on my nerves as I watched this film.

In my opinion, none of the parents in this movie would ever be a suitable candidate for Parent of the Year.

With all this being said, though, I will admit that this movie was really entertaining, especially with each prank the kid played.

Despite certain parts of it causing me annoyance, I really did enjoy this movie, and it definitely should be recommended to any family that is looking to watch a movie with their kids.

This was a great movie!

Jeff-O-Meter final score: 10/10