Getting Even With Dad is more of a nostalgia moment for me than anything else. What is interesting to see is how the film still has an emotional impact on me today. This isn't anything to fancy with regards to the scriptwriting or even the cinematography. This relies purely on the character development and acting of our main cast. Macaulay Culkin was such a big star at the time yet this one flopped a little on its release. Suddenly the audience had got bored of Culkin and he wasn't so cute anymore. However I believe Culkin plays a reasonably good part in this movie alongside Ted Danson.

The basic theme of the movie is blackmail, Culkin finds no other way to reason with his father on pulling off a coin heist, in which he sees it ending only one way. Alongside Danson and Culkin we have some great supporting characters, Rays (Ted Danson) two cronies Bobby and Carl played by Saul Rubinek and Gailard Sartain. Saul Rubinek adds some humour to what is mostly perceived as an emotional drama from my perspective. Where Getting Even with Dad struggles is sometimes in the pacing and also not fully sure of what it wants to be. It crosses genre without really settling on something concrete, this isn't a bad thing it just means it comes across of being not fully aware of the message it's trying to convey.

If you just watch this is a lighthearted mood and accept it for what it is you'll enjoy it yet if you are looking for something with a little more depth and meaning then you'll probably find you are on the side of the disappointed.

I enjoyed this movie and have watched it several times. It has an interesting story line and holds the interest. I would call it a fairly mild family drama and crime drama, rather than a comedy, though it does have comic elements -- for instance: Ted: How'd you get so smart? Macauley: I don't know. It sure doesn't run in the family.

I like the way Glenne Headley, a rookie in the detective department, talks in that meek, mousey voice, and yet she's always right and she cracks the whole crime. And her partner demeans and disparages everything she says -- that seems true to life.

Hector Elizondo has a nice turn as the detectives' boss; he's not a martinet; he's a reasonable man and gives them leeway to explore their theories.

Somehow I couldn't quite believe Ted Danson as a career criminal. He doesn't seem mean and immoral enough. But he did a good job nevertheless. (Hated his pony tail!)

Great ending -- Macaulay, who has outsmarted the adults all the way along, does it one more time. I like the way he brings a moral element into the matter, refusing to condone theft.

I would call this a feel-good movie, with less over-the-top slapstick than the Home Alone series.

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.