The Buttercream Gang

I don't even know where to begin to evaluate this movie. When Dan was a child, he LOVED this movie and watched it frequently. I had never heard of it, so he was excited to introduce this "classic" film to me. It is one of the "Feature Films for Families" that was made to teach children morals and help them make good choices. The premise of this film is that a group of boys called "The Buttercream Gang" works together to do kind deeds for the members of their town. In fact, since the town was founded there has always been a gang of boys called "The Buttercream Gang"...and the towns people always selected the most kind and helpful boys to be a part of the group...and they called themselves the Buttercreamers. Then, one of the boys moves to another city (Chicago, to be exact) and gets involved in a real gang...so he is sent back to the town, but he is not the same. My coworkers informed me recently that they have all seen this movie and enjoy it...but here are my complaints:

Acting: I could never, ever describe accurately the horrendous acting. I would put it in the "after school special" category...in fact, I think this would have made an excellent after school special. One thing that was disturbing to me was that one of the main characters (Pete) looked exactly like Pee Wee Herman...creepy. I felt like I was watching a movie that one of my classmates made in Junior High for a history project. However, I can not blame them for the bad acting because they were not experienced actors.

Writing: The acting was laughable, and the writing was even more hilarious. I think the writers want us to believe that any child who moves to Chicago will get involved with a gang and then change his entire value system in under 8 months...yeah, right. For a minute, I wanted to blame the poor writing and overall quality of the film on the time period that it was made...but then I realized that there were some incredibly movies made in 1992, including A Few Good Men and Unforgiven...so I know this could have been better quality. My favorite quote from the movie is as follows: "Is that a threat? NO...it's a promise".

Costume Design: Although this movie was filmed in 1992, the outfits are "totally 80's" with a splash of "polygamy". My favorite "costumes" included chubby boys wearing tight jean shorts (with their shirts tucked in) and home made flowered dresses on every single adult woman. I wish I could find some pictures to post so that you can understand...

Miscellaneous: I have to give the production crew credit, because it appears that they created a reoccurring theme in movies. I think this is one of the oldest films that I have seen where they try to make a seemingly unattractive girl look beautiful by putting her in a prom dress and taking away her glasses...and then keeping her glasses off for the remainder of the movie so that the audience would then realize how beautiful she was all along. This style was used once before (in 1986's Lucus) but has since been used many times...in such films as The Princess Diaries, Miss Congeniality, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, etc.

I have decided that I can not rate this movie...each person needs to watch it for themselves to make their own determination of this movie's quality.