User Reviews

Ray, an ex-con and widower, is planning a coin heist with two accomplices to help him to buy his own bakery.

However, he doesn't expect his son Timmy, who was living with Ray's sister, to show up at the house right in the middle of planning.

Timmy is ignored and Ray and his buddies pull off the heist. Timmy gets his father's attention by stealing the coins and hiding them.

To get them back, his father must take him to a number of different places and treat him like he enjoys his presence.

They grow fond of each other but Timmy won't stay with his dad unless he gives up the coins....

Culkin was getting older, so the cute thing he did in his earlier stuff was now becoming annoying, hence the reason why this bombed big time.

And the fact that the film was overlong and just not very funny..

But thats not to say that it isn't watchable. Danson is great as Ray, even though you'd expect him to be in a Stallone comedy with that accent. And he does have great chemistry with the cast and especially Culkin toward the end.

But it's all predictable stuff, as there are hi-jinks and pratfalls from the two bumbling sidekicks who are just interested in the coins, and these become tiresome straight away.

It's one of those movies you can have on in the background and not really watch, but you can still follow the story pretty easy.

Too long for kids, way too long for adults.

There are numerous dumb things about this movie. First of all are the dumb bumbling crooks, which were in numerous 1990s movies. The idiot bad guys, by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, were semi amusing in "Home Alone" 1990, but then directors decided to start using the idiot crooks style characters in countless other 90s movies including "Houseguest", "The jerky boys", "Cop and a half", etc., and here in "Getting even with Dad". Macculy Culkan stars again, like in "Home Alone", as the smart alec kid who outsmarts the crooks, which is also something which quickly grew tiresome.

Macculy here decides he wants to blackmail his Dad (Ted Danson) and idiot crook croneys over a bag of valuable coins worth millions, that Danson and his croneys highjacked from a couple of armoured car men. Mac is upset over not seeing his dad for years, who had been in prison, and is upset over finding out what his dad is really up to. So Mac decides to take the coins and hide them from the 3 men and will only tell them where it is if his dad starts taking him sightseeing around San Francisco, which is not ok. First of all, a kid should understand things such as maybe the dad not being able to afford to suddenly take him sightseeing, understanding that his dad needs to go to work some of the time, etc. And the kid taking something valuable and stolen and deciding on his own terms what to do with it such as what he did here, I'm not even sure is legal even though he threatened dad to eventually go to the cops if he didn't do what he wanted. This all took part in helping to make this look like an inept movie.

Mac had been living with Danson's sister (his aunt) and her new jerk*** husband, even though it seems somewhat understandable his feelings towards the kid if he acted the same way with them as he did with his dad. But like the idiot crooks, the husband was another unlikable character in this movie, even though Mac has an unacceptable level of entitlement here. Mac should've contacted his aunt and tell her what's really going on with her ex-con brother. I'm not totally sure what a kid should do if finding out that his dad is engaging in criminal activity, but I'm sure that it's not to do what Mac did here with his hiding the coins/blackmailing/sightseeing game.

So Danson, along with his croneys, take the smart alec black mailing kid to the science museum, the San Francisco aquarium, the baseball game, the amusement park, and miniature golfing. Glen Hadley, a police detective (and not a believable one), and her captain (Hector Elonzo, playing the same type of tempermental captain seen in many other movies) start suspecting Danson and his croneys as being behind the coin robbery. So Hadley begins tailing the 3 guys and Mac, and follows them everywhere they go watching them. Eventually, Hadley begins conversing with Mac and Danson, after Mac almost gets hit by a bus while chasing a basketball. Neither of them know that she's a cop and has been following them, even though us viewers could clearly see her in every previous location the guys went (aquarium, stadium, fun park, etc.). The guys don't recognize her and just focus on wanting to ask her out. So Mac decides to be a little smooth talker (after a little advice on the basketball court) and he asks Hadley out for Dad. She's soon joining them for dinner, and Hadley and Danson even kiss. I guess that we're supposed to be charmed by all this, but to me it just didn't quite make those scenes charming. I felt a little bit more like Hadley's partner questioning why she's suddenly dating and kissing the possible suspects that they were only supposed to follow and watch. I've however liked Glen Hadley in other movies (movies I like better than this one) such as in "Dirty rotten scoundrels" and "Mr. Holland's opus", but she was just too sweet and sensitive natured and soft talking to be believable as a cop.

Anyway, yes, this is far from my favorite movie, but I did like a couple of bits such as the main characters learning that a squid is a septapod and not a fish, Dad showing Mac how to eat clams at an Italian restaurant, and Danson showing signs towards the latter part of the movie that he did have more decent underlying qualities and was ready to show them and ditch his not-so-good old self.

The title was very familiar to me, and it sounded like the kind of film that the young star of Macaulay Culkin would be in, so I was interested to see whether the concept would be, from director Howard Deutch (The Whole Ten Years). Basically Raymond 'Ray' Gleason (Three Men and a Baby's Ted Danson) is planning a coin heist with his two accomplices Robert 'Bobby' Drace (Saul Rubinek) and Carl (Gailard Sartain) so he can buy a bakery, but he has a surprise visitor. His son Timmy (Razzie nominated Macaulay Culkin) has been living with Ray's sister, including while he was in prison, and he wants to a get to know his father better, but obviously this is inconvenient. The thieves manage to pull off the heist and get the valuable coins, and Timmy finds out about it, and he uses it to his advantage by taking and hiding the coins in order to con his father. Ray has to spend time with his son in order to get the coins back, this includes trips to a swimming park, a mini golf course and meals out, and for a while this is getting on his nerves, but actually over time the father is getting closer to and finding admiration for his son. Meanwhile the police are also trying to find the coins and catch the gang out, with Detective Theresa Walsh (Glenne Headly) going undercover to get close to the main man, and unintentionally falling for him. Eventually Timmy finds that he cannot change his father's ways, and he offers him the choice of the coins back, or staying with his son, and thankfully he chooses his son, but the locker the coins are in are opened and he ends up arrested. In the end though the bag is full of loose change, the real coins are returned to the authorities, and Timmy and Ray go on to have a close father-son relationship. Also starring Hector Elizondo as Lt. Romayko, Sam McMurray as Alex, Sydney Walker as Mr. Wankmueller and Kathleen Wilhoite as Kitty. Culkin does his usual mischievous and more clever than the adults character, as well as being a little spoilt, and he has a silly hairdo, Danson also has a slightly daft pony tail, he gives a good annoyed performance, I will agree that the father's thieving partners are the ones that get a little more punishment, I hoped for more slapstick stuff, it was an easy to swallow but hardly worth the effort family comedy. Okay!

The movie is about an ex-con named Ray Gleason (played by Ted Danson), who plans to steal millions of dollars in rare coins, along with his two cronies Carl and Bob (played by Saul Rubinek and Gailard Sartain. Their plan is thwarted when his sister drops off his son named Timmy (played by Macaulay Culkin). He hides the coins somewhere his father won't find them. He agrees to tell them where the coins are on one condition: if they take him places for a week. But a female cop named Teresa (played by Glenne Headly) goes undercover to find out what Gleason is doing. And she falls for him. On the other hand, the cronies decide to find the rare coins themselves. And of course, they fail. Near the end, Gleason finds the bag in a bus locker, which turned out to have pennies in it, but still gets arrested, along with Carl, and Bob got off scot-free. And the bag with the real coins got retrieved by Teresa in a mall. To be honest, it's not so bad. It's not a perfect movie, but it's great entertainment.

I've enjoyed this movie as easy watching for years since I accidentally recorded it off the TV. My sister and I've always assumed it was called "Paying Back Dad", because.. that's clearly a better title. :]

And that's my only complaint, beyond the occasional overly stupid pratfall.

Ted Danson plays a macho ex-con cake decorator who throws a plant out a window and falls over while ice-skating and still gets the lady, and Macaulay Culkin gets a musical segment. Also it opens with a heist, and the heart-warming climax happens on a bus. If you do not like these things, you are wrong!