A lot of crotches get abused in the kiddie comedy "Unaccompanied Minors." And as a viewer, I felt a lot like a crotch.
Kids (including Tyler James Williams, the star of "Everybody Hates Chris") who are shuttling between divorced parents get stranded at an airport terminal during a holiday blizzard. They escape a holding area and scamper around playing with stuff while authorities try to catch them.
There are 16-page storybooks with more plot than this movie, which tries to capture the kid-power fantasy of "Home Alone." But the kids' main goal is just to kill some time.
One child gets stuck in a suitcase that's dropped down some chutes, another wanders around talking to his Aquaman doll, another issues mysterious attempts at jokes like, "You're adopted, Underpants."
Their enemy is the airport manager played by Lewis Black, a comic who does one thing and does it badly. As he has throughout his inexplicable career, he continues to think that the secret to funny lies in the volume control. This time his peevish screams include "Are you out of your juice-drinking little MINDS?" and "OK, NOW I'm MAD!"
When there is nothing else going on, someone takes a punch to the groin, and 89 minutes go by like 89 hours. Not just 89 regular hours either: 89 hours of being stuck in an airport. During a blizzard. While Lewis Black sleeps drooling on your shoulder. Maybe some (very) little ones will enjoy the slapstick, but they're the kind who would be just as happy to play with an empty box. "Unaccompanied Minors" is strictly for undemanding minors.
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Like a hastily packed suitcase, "Unaccompanied Minors" buries the one essential item for a successful comedy beneath layers of implausible situations, distinctly unfunny slapstick and stale jokes, including one about flatulence that reeks of desperation.
The buried ingredient is an emotional connection to this scattershot story of kids stranded at an airport on Christmas. A human factor is there, but barely mined. These adolescents are from broken homes and are traveling by themselves to visit the parent they don't regularly live with. The screenwriters take a subject that millions of families could relate to and sporadically allude to it between stupid shtick.
There's a touching scene toward the end where you see what "Unaccompanied Minors" might have been. A gang of unruly children wreak havoc with a terminal and luggage loading dock. A rigid airport official commends the pack's leader, Spencer (Dyllan Christopher), on his ingenuity and jokingly asks whether he trained with the Navy Seals. Spencer's reply -- that kids from divorced families are naturally more resourceful -- is one of few genuine moments in a ridiculously contrived movie.
A monster snowstorm brings together a half-dozen youngsters each representing a Hollywood cliche of childhood. There's the snooty rich girl (Gina Mantegna, Joe Mantegna's daughter), the trailer trash tomboy (Quinn Shephard), the fat kid (Brett Kelly), who is always embarrassing himself, and the smarty-pants, Charlie (Tyler James Williams). Since Spencer's parents split, he's become the man of the house, responsible for his beyond adorable younger sister. His promise that Santa would deliver her present by a specified time results in him and his new friends escaping from a holding room within the bowels of the airport, stealing canoes from the unclaimed baggage room and paddling down snow-covered hills to a hotel where the little girl is staying.
Given the limits of their roles, the young actors acquit themselves well enough, particularly Williams (star of the sitcom "Everybody Hates Chris") as the multitalented Charlie, who upon finding a top hat and cane among the unclaimed items breaks into an irresistible soft shoe.
It's easy for Spencer and Charlie and their cohorts to appear smart since the adults are painted as idiots. Security guards meant to be monitoring the kids engage in a game of musical chairs instead in which they neglect to remove one of the seats. Flight attendants leave Spencer's sister with a child a few years older while they go off to snare a pilot.
Filmmaker Paul Feig has proven his creativity directing "The Office" and "Freaks and Geeks" (which he created). With "Unaccompanied Minors," he piles on one unfunny gag after another, leaving little room for character development. A half-baked script by Jacob Meszaros and Mya Stark admittedly gives Feig little to work with. But his young cast is capable of a lot more than is required of them in this so-called comedy.
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