Unaccompanied Minors

Lewis Black
Wilmer Valderramma
Dyllan Christopher
Tyler James Wilson
Paget Brewster

Directed by: Paul Feig

Unaccompanied Minors is the story of a boy and his sister who get stranded in an airport on Christmas Eve. To make matters worse, they are locked in a room full of other child passengers without parental supervision. A low level employee tries to babysit the crowd and the airport manager takes his frustration at having to work on Christmas Eve out on a room full of kids. The minors meanwhile, try to entertain themselves and decide to bring the Christmas spirit to the other stranded passengers.

Calling this film bad would only scratch the surface of this films problems and wouldn’t really give you an idea of its real issues. Let’s start at the beginning. Most children’s films seem to be based solely on the idea the children are stupid and gullible. While a movie review is certainly no place to debate that little theory, this film seems to wallow in and even taunt the audience at every turn to see just how dumb they really are. It is an insult to people and children that aren’t even looking for any kind of lesson from a film, they just want to laugh and have an enjoyable few hours watching the antics of other children. Unaccompanied Minors starts off with an interesting enough premise and just nosedives into ludicrous tangents and really bad jokes. That isn’t the worst part. There is a bigger and much more important reason to stay as far away from this film as possible. This film is a carbon copy rip off of a much beloved 80’s film, dumbed down and muddied to appeal to an audience that is considered too stupid to notice or care.

Unaccompanied Minors is a terrible rip-off of the film The Breakfast Club and seems to have been written by committee from a template, designed to get a few laughs and be completely forgotten. At first, the story of a group of kids that get locked in a room with other kids doesn’t really compare. Then there is the authority figure who takes out his personal failures on said kids. Then the innocent breakout and mini run through the high school, I mean mall. Then the kid in the storage closet that tries to break out only to (wait for it) fall through the ceiling tiles. There is even the bonding session where the kids talk about each other. The similarities pile up with an ending that mirrors the original film, where the boy/girl characters that created a special connection have a moment together to contemplate the future, about as seriously as a pre teen film that never really tries to get serious can. Granted, this is supposed to be a fun little film about a group of kids that are stranded in a snowstorm trying to have fun, but couldn’t the filmmakers at least try to make a film that doesn’t gut a film people actually enjoyed 20 years ago. Maybe at least trying to be clever is just too much to ask.
 

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