CURLY SUEÂ (PG)
D: John Hughes
Warner Bros. (John Hughes)
USA 🇺🇸 1991
101 mins
Â
Comedy
Â
W:Â John Hughes
DP:Â Jeffrey Kimball
Ed: Peck Prior & Harvey Rosenstock
Mus:Â Georges Delerue
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James Belushi (Bill Dancer), Kelly Lynch (Grey Ellison),
Alisan Porter (Curly Sue), John Getz (Walker McCormick)
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Throughout the 1980's, John Hughes' movies mostly
concerned teenage characters in high school with various adventures and dilemmas.  Â
Come 1990, Hughes seemed to only be interested in making
films about younger, more precocious people, which worked well in Home Alone, but not so much here.
Curly Sue is a grotesquely schmaltzy comedy about a con
man and his 9-year-old orphan accomplice who win the heart of a successful woman lawyer. The film is so contrived and manipulative that it comes off only as turgid tosh, not helped by a
horrible performance by its juvenile star. Shirley Temple may have got away with this sort of thing in the 1930's, even Tatum O'Neal in 1973, but Alisan Porter in 1991, no way
sucker!
4/10