Artie (Billy Crystal) loves his job as a minor league baseball announcer. He dreams of announcing for the Giants. His dream is cut short when his job is terminated at the end of the season. Artie is old school. He is technically challenged. Meanwhile his daughter Alice (Marisa Tomei) is desperate for a sitter for week and calls her parents. Artie's wife Diane (Bette Midler) agrees.Alice and her husband (Tom Everett Scott) are technically savvy. Their three children all have issues from having overprotective parents who use the new school of parenting. It isn't hard to figure out what happens.This is a good family film. Kids will enjoy this more adults who will have felt they have seen this film watching it for the first time. Crystal once again infuses his love for the game of baseball into a film. The movie has funny one liners, some heartfelt scenes, and good fun.Perhaps this isn't really a five star movie. There is no heavy thinking involved. No deep meanings or metaphors. It is simply a popcorn eating, relaxing, family film, something I haven't seen in a long time.Parental Guide: No swear words, sex, or nudity. One urination scene.

Now days, Billy Crystal doesn't appear in films as often as he used to, but for the right project and cast, he's always willing to remind us of why he's a household name. It doesn't matter if it's a raunchy comedy or a family film, his quirky and unique sense of humor always makes whatever he stars in that much more enjoyable and Parental Guidance is no different. On the surface, this is just another family comedy about Grandma and Grandpa getting in over their heads when they agree to babysit for the weekend. Add Crystal and Bette Midler to that and all of a sudden the film is taken to a whole other level. Everyone knows what to expect from both Crystal and Midler, but the real magic is their chemistry and how they play off each other, especially when you throw three unpredictable kids into the mix. Some of the scenes with the grandparents trying to use the modern technology or the kids taking advantage of the grandparents lack of respect for their parents strict instructions are truly laugh out loud funny. Yes, that's exactly what I said, it's a PG rated family movie, but it has more than a couple of laugh out loud moments. Parental Guidance is a film that the parents and grandparents will want to see for it's terrific cross-generational cast, but the kids will enjoy it too, for both it's old school and modern humor. It's the perfect rainy day weekend family feature film.

Billy Crystal, an actor I wasn't fond of a couple of years ago. Not because I didn't like his movies, but the buzz that was surrounding him and his Oscar Speeches (of which I hadn't heard any) was too much for me. In this movie he's doing speeches too, but he's also doing other things and almost everything works on some level. I thought this would be fairly funny if I was lucky, but it turns out this was more than that! It is really funny.The premise might not feel like much, but the actors make the difference! Be it the adults or the kid actors at hand. Especially the girl, whom you might have seen in other movies too. Parenting can be difficult, but also very funny. Of course it is obvious where the movie is going, but you can still have a lot of fun on your way there ... if you let yourself enjoy it

Hello!First off, I would like to say that EVERY potential film director and script writer should watch this film......they should watch this film to learn EVERY POSSIBLE mistake that you can make in writing and filming a family oriented movie.Don't get me wrong, I like Billy Crystal, Bette Midler, and Marisa Tomei, the three principal actors, quite a bit. Billy Crystal's small performance in "The Princess Bride" as Miracle Max, is hilarious, and one of the high points of the movie. There are a number of other movies that they have done solid, good work in.Unfortunately, though, this film wasn't one of them.Billy Crystal would seem to be most at fault here. He is listed as one of the "Producers", so presumably he had some control over the final script. How he let this script abomination get to the filming stage, is beyond me. He made this film at the age of 64, and I would say this turkey has just about tanked his fading film career; and he has taken Bette Midler and Marisa Tomei along with him.The characters in this film act like sub-grade morons, and somehow manage to insult just about every age group there is. In itself, this would actually appear to be a minor achievement, as I don't remember ANY other movie that I have seen, actually insult so many age groups in a single movie.If you have seen other family movies, don't worry, EVERY BAD cliché you have EVER seen about families, is in this movie. They have neatly collected them all together, for your viewing displeasure, so you don't have to watch dozens of other bad family movies, to see them all.For a comedy, you might call it "comedy light" or "comedy free", as there were virtually NO funny moments, or laughs over the entire movie.In the end credits of the movie, they said that 14,000 jobs were created by this movie, with over 600,000 man hours spent in the production.WHERE did all this time and effort supposedly GO? This movie was worse than even an average made-for-TV, very low budget, family production.600,000 hours to make this God awful STINKER? GEEZ! It staggers the imagination! Frankly, if I were involved with the production of this stinking pile of you-know-what, I WOULDN'T plaster my face all over the end credits, as they did with the actors, their families, and the production staff, and their families, in this movie.I'd wear a paper bag over my head, instead, and pretend that I had nothing what-so-ever to do with this movie.The script is SO, BAD, BAD, BAD, that it is a little difficult to figure how bad the acting was. Billy Crystal, Bette Midler, and Marisa Tomei were obviously NOT in top form, however, the dialogue was so reekingly BAD, that it was difficult to tell how much was bad acting, and how much was the terrible script.I pardon Bette Midler a bit, here. Even though she was listed second in the credits, she was given virtually nothing of importance to do in the movie. I expected some hilarious moments between her and Billy Crystal, but there were virtually NO humorous moments between them.Andy Fickman, as director, deserves more than a few barbs, here. Billy Crystal, Bette Midler, and Marisa Tomei are decent actors, but it sure wasn't obvious from this movie. I would say Andy Fickman was instrumental in the reekingly BAD quality of this movie.Run, don't walk, as far away from this stinking pile of... "film", as possible.My 2¢ worth.Karl