Well, dear reader, I knew it would come to this eventually so I figured we might as well start getting these out of the way. There are so many movies on my list that absolutely do not hold up today in terms of humor, but what we have today is a movie that was made entirely to play out one bad joke and serve as a vehicle for one-liners from an aging stand-up comedian. Today my friends, we are going to take a look at the 1992 “family comedy” Ladybugs. Ladybugs is built upon a simple premise that honestly used to take up a lot of real estate in the world of comedy; “cis-het male wears dress, hilarious, ha ha ha” and the film trots this out from the moment the “joke” is introduced until the very last frame of the movie. The other premise of this movie is “Rodney Dangerfield is set up to tell one-liners,” and if you know Rodney’s stuff, you’ll know it tends to lean more sexually charged in nature. So of course, the best possible way to execute these two premises would be to make a movie where Rodney Dangerfield stars as a soccer coach to a bunch of fourteen year old girls and coerces his athletic soon-to-be stepson, who already despises him, into dressing like a girl to join the team and give them a boost. I know what you’re thinking; there is no way this can be bad, right? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this one is bad all the way through.

Ladybugs was directed by Sidney Furie, a director I am not familiar with but who has directed over fifty features, of which I am familiar with only Ladybugs. The movie stars Rodney Dangerfield as Chester, a middling salesman who is somehow afforded an overly-competent personal assistant Julie (the always lovely Jackée Harry) despite being touted as a failure and who has been in his position twelve years and wants a raise. This will help him afford a wedding to his fiancé Bess (Ilene Graff), who’s son Matthew (the late and underrated Jonathan Brandis) finds Chester to be a pest at best. In order to achieve his raise, Chester must coach a struggling girls’ soccer team for his boss that includes his boss’ daughter Kimberly (Vinessa Shaw) who just happens to be the object of Matthew’s unrequited affection. Of course, you already know where this is going, so why make you wait any longer?

Well, there is one thing I’d like to address about this movie, and that’s the fact that the majority of the “humor” of the film is not only dated and in extremely poor taste in 2021, but would have been dated and in extremely poor taste in 1992 when the movie debuted. As I previously stated, the entire premise is just that Matthew is dressed up like a girl to play on the girls’ soccer team. Cross-dressing for laughs has thankfully been phased out of the movie world, but it was still apparently all the rage back in the early 90’s, as this movie predates Mrs. Doubtfire by over a year, and actually shares a lot of the same joke setups with Mrs. Doubtfire, although they do not land anywhere near as gracefully as the ones in that movie. The other premise of the movie is just to let Rodney Dangerfield be Rodney Dangerfield. Chester is essentially Rodney. I absolutely loved the Rodman (R.I.P.) so this isn’t against Mr. Dangerfield, more against the entire premise of this film in general, but there does not seem to be much separation aside from the fact that Chester tells one-liners as a company man and the real Rodney did it for a living. So much of the dialogue and many of the scenarios are set up so Chester can deliver a quip. The thing about these quips is more often than not, they tend to be sexualized, and once again this is a movie about coaching a young teenage girls’ soccer team. I’m sure you can see where this gets inappropriate even before the two extremely uncomfortable molestation jokes are parsed out.

The film starts with Chester at a self-affirmation seminar that culminates with saying you should work for someone tall so it’s easier to kiss their ass. Not a direct quote but not far off. Not sure how this helps one build confidence, but if we start analyzing the things that don’t make sense in this movie, we’ll be here until January. We cut to Julie, Chester’s personal assistant who seems to actually do all the things that will help him succeed. Is the film trying to show us that behind every successful man is a hard-working woman who doesn’t get her credit? Is this movie secretly very progressive about its gender politics? Absolutely not, that’s just wishful thinking on my part. But I’ve decided that it’s a core part of what makes this movie function so we’re going to operate under that presumption for the rest of this piece.

As you can guess, Chester gets NO RESPECT! But he is taking steps to gain it. For a man who has internalized a lack of respect, he moves with swift confidence. He needs to get his raise so he can marry Bess and become a family with her and her son Matthew, who is not the biggest fan of Chester. Chester makes his way to his boss to request his raise, making sure to take time for sexually harassing an older secretary on the way to the office. The harassment is bad enough that if anyone at my company said one of the things he says, I’m sure they’d be out the door but instead it seems to flatter the old secretary and we have an example of Chester getting away with whatever because it’s a movie.

Chester’s awful boss is not receptive to his proposal for a raise and decides that if Chester wants a new position with a swanky office, he will need to coach to championship victory the company’s youth girls’ soccer team, which I guess was a thing in the 90’s? I seem to remember company baseball teams as a running gag on sitcoms, but they were never made up of random preteen and teen girls, were they? Anyway, the team is apparently a dynasty and all but one player from last season has left and the new ragtag bunch are not good. That bunch includes the boss’ daughter Kimberly. Obviously, Chester lies about his soccer credentials and in no time, he and Julie, who also knows nothing about soccer, are coaching and doing a bad job.

Chester asks Matthew to watch practice and maybe give some pointers which he is reluctant to do until he realizes Kimberly is on the team. He has such a huge crush on her, and she barely knows he exists. I don’t believe that for a second, because Matthew has that 90’s heartthrob look and his wardrobe is outstanding. Like seriously, it’s stuff Supreme would release today and sell out of. Who wouldn’t notice him?

Anyway, Matthew is disgusted that Chester wants his help until seeing Kimberly, where he has a teenage fantasy of her running at him scantily clad (which is pretty uncomfortable as she’s like fourteen), then them going on a private jet and getting married, and in his fantasy, he has a super dope oversized patchwork blazer. Sheesh, my man even has a great wardrobe in his imagination. I think I need to start imagining myself in cooler outfits when I daydream. The bar has been raised.

So basically, in like a flash second, Matthew is convinced to join the team as “Martha” and it happens so fast that I guess we as the audience were supposed to conclude that the only logical idea is to have him pretend to be a girl and infiltrate the team. Not even like a moment for us to realize what’s gonna happen. Just BOOM! Carol Brady wig on Matthew and he’s automatically Martha. Honestly, I had longer hair than that in high school. I think I do now. What I mean by that is, I don’t get mistaken for a girl so the fact that they thought all they had to do was throw a wig on the kid and he’d fool everyone is pretty wild. They barely have him act different until it’s time for Julie to “coach” him on being a lady so we get an unfunny “comic relief” scene at the mall showing how girls supposedly walk, etc. Chester takes Matthew to a girl’s store to get him dresses, and the store has so many badass windbreakers. Chester has to help Matthew in the changing room where a very uncomfortable child rape joke plays out for way too long. Like I said, it’s not a progressive film.

We don’t get a lot of logic in this movie, but we do get a lot of vintage Dangerfield one-liners and jokes about balls. I’m not a big soccer guy, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a player-coach easily guiding the other players on the team next to them on the field as they succeed, and the other team fails to gain momentum. I feel confident saying if the players need that intense of close coaching in that moment, the other team will probably wipe the floor with them, but again, not a sports guy.

I really don’t think you need a full summation of the rest of the film at this point, do you? Let’s just walk through some highlights: Matthew’s wardrobe is excellent, Julie is behind every successful thing that happens to Chester and doesn’t get credit, Matthew as Martha takes a soccer ball to the groin and plays it off like it doesn’t hurt (ball jokes!) which shows how dedicated he is to playing Martha, Martha and Kimberly become close friends, and the “nerdy” girl on the team needs a pep-talk from Chester which, although his heart seems to be in the right place, it comes off creepy and uncomfortable. What else? Oh, how about Martha going back to Kimberly’s house and…all the girls are gonna skinny dip? Weird. They really needed a situation where Matthew could be exposed, I guess. So, he’s close to being found out and Chester has to dress as a woman to pretend to be Martha’s mother, and fools Kimberly’s mom into believing the role despite it just being Chester in a veil and Kimberly’s mom already knowing Chester. But, hey it’s a movie!

Eventually we get to the scene that Mrs. Doubtfire would handle with much more grace; the back and forth changing from one character to another scene to address two different people in two rooms. Kimberly comes over to hang with Martha and Matthew is able to keep her fooled while changing and going upstairs as Matthew to talk to his mom and Chester. There’s really good Coca Cola product placement that almost made me walk to the corner store for a 20 ounce. Chester helps him get rid of Kimberly, but their ruse is up when Bess discovers Matthew in a dress and wig. In perhaps the oddest element of the film, this makes Bess mad at Matthew to the point she stops talking to him for a few days. We can understand her being mad at Chester, but wouldn’t you think she might want to talk to her son and see what’s going on rather than shut him out after finding him in this odd situation? Maybe it’s just me but Bess seems like a shitty mom.

So, the championship game happens and the opposing team is Olympic grade and led by Coach Bull (Chet Hunter! My man Blake Clark) who is a drill sergeant and is scary as hell. The team is not only down Martha but also Kimberly as her father asked her to be pulled so she didn’t embarrass him. Awful parents in this movie. Of course, Matthew shows up to save Chester’s ass because Matthew’s a good person who is dedicated to helping even if it started as a selfish thing. When he finds out Kimberly isn’t there, he runs and gets her and brings her back to the team, where he and Chester reveal that it was Matthew not Martha all along. Chester then actually gives a pretty solid speech about how the team are women and they don’t need a man for them to win and succeed, which is ironic seeing as this is an extremely sexist movie and the men in it actually need women to succeed, as Martha and Julie seem to be the genesis for all successes in this film.

Obviously, the Ladybugs secure victory, Chester gets his promotion, Bess and he reunite and marry, Kimberly and Matthew start dating and the film ends with Chester coaching a “girls’ softball” team which is made up entirely of boys in wigs, and he looks to the audience, breaking the fourth wall to tell us he finally got some respect. And that’s our mindfuck of a movie.

So. There is just….SO MUCH to address here! Obviously, this film is extremely problematic in its gender politics, but it also has the misfortune of being one of the lowest quality entries in the film subgenre of “guy in dress ha ha” which thankfully has gone the way of the dodo bird in Hollywood. This movie is a giant mess from start to finish and I’m actually shocked I was allowed to watch this one as young as I did, but then again it is a PG13 movie starring a dirty comedian billed as a family movie for kids. There is not a lot of positivity you can take from this film, so I would like to summarize it quickly by harking back to one of my early points: “behind every man there is at least one and up to a team of successful women that are doing the work he gets all the credit for”. This is what I’m deciding to take from this film. It may be my own creative understanding but that’s what I got. But, hey, I did the best I could with a film that doesn’t give its audience any respect. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

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