This is the movie in which director John Hughes made a decision to leave the world of adolescence behind after films such as The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off and regress into childhood. Despite the fact that this was also the film that unleashed Macaulay Culkin on to the world at large, there is still much to enjoy. John Candy makes the most of his starring role as the lovable slob who is pressed into looking after his brother's children, and Hughes stages some neat comic set pieces. Only the sentimental moralising strikes a false note.

Buck Russell, a lovable but slovenly bachelor, suddenly becomes the temporary caretaker of his nephew and nieces after a family emergency. His freewheeling attitude soon causes tension with his older niece Tia, loyal girlfriend Chanice and just about everyone else who crosses his path.