The 411 Movies Top 5 09.10.10: Week 234 - Most Annoying Child Movie Characters

Posted by Trevor Snyder on 09.10.2010

From Jake Lloyd's Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode I to Haley Joel Osment's Cole in The Sixth Sense, the 411 Staff ranks their Top 5 annoying child movie characters! Check out the full article to see who made the lists and why!



THE TOP 5 MOST ANNOYING CHILD MOVIE CHARACTERS

TREVOR SNYDER

5. Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan), in Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom



Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom is actually my favorite of the series. I know that's not the popular consensus, but what can I say – the film's darker tone speaks to me, I guess. Still, though, there's one thing I have never quite liked about it…the fact that Indy doesn't just leave his annoying little sidekick to rot back in that mine. Sure, sure, Short Round gave us a few quotable lines that we all still like to say today, but don't tell me when you watch this movie you don't think about how he himself probably could have used some time as a child laborer for the film's evil cult. Probably why one of my favorite scenes is when "evil Indy" finally smacks the damn brat.

4. Alexis Murphy (Ariana Richards), in Jurassic Park



I know a lot of people hate both kids in Steven Spielberg's dinosaurs-run-amok classic, and I'm certainly not suggesting that Tim (played by Joseph Mazzello) is any great character, either. After all, both exist primarily to be placed in constant peril and scream a lot. Still, in my opinion, the brother has nothing on the sister when it comes to being annoying. I mean, here we have a young computer-hacker who is smart enough to break an important code at a crucial moment. Let's face it, "young computer genius" characters are almost always intolerable, but here it's even worse because we're supposed to except that Lex is smart enough to do that, but not quite smart enough to figure out that waving a flashlight beam all over the place is not exactly a wise move when there's a Tyrannosaurus Rex outside her car, despite her brother telling her the exact thing as she does it. The slimy lawyer probably died because of her, and while that might not be a great loss, you still have to wonder if she even feels bad about it.

3. Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), in The Sixth Sense



Yeah, it's a good movie. And sure, Osment gives a performance that, technically, is pretty good. But am I the only one who thought it was kind of a dick move not to just tell Bruce Willis he was actually dead from the beginning? Oh, uh….spoiler alert. Maybe the ghosts picked this kid because they instinctively felt he was a little turd and deserved to be haunted.

2. Conrad Walden (Spencer Breslin), in The Cat in the Hat



To understand how annoying Conrad is would require actually watching Cat in the Hat, and that's not a course of action I'll recommend for anyone. But if you're like me and actually have seen the movie (or, to be more specific, seen enough of it to know now to watch the rest), then you'll know where I'm coming from on this one. Granted, every single performance in this travesty is bad, and it's sorta tough to single out any one over Mike Myers' dreadful Cat in the Hat. But there's just something about Breslin's destructive Conrad – he's that kid that you see running wild in a department store, talking back to his parents, and you just want to trip him and send him flying face first into the counter. You know?

1. Ray Boyd (Jonathan Lipnicki), in Jerry Maguire



C'mon, how would you seriously feel if you started seeing a girl and it turned out that this was her son? How long would you be able to put up with that lisp and the incessant trivia? How long until you decided to put his info about how much a human head weighs to the test? If you're just wondering if I seriously just advocated decapitating this kid, well, no comment. But, man….Ray is terrible.

BRYAN KRISTOPOWITZ

5. Kevin McCallister, in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)



After the first "Home Alone" movie made a few hundred million dollars in 1990 it was only a matter of time before a second one was made. Two years later "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" hit theatres. And while the movie made a bunch of money, too, the whole "Kevin McCallister accidentally loses his family and he's on his own against nefarious villains" was already old. Kevin was a little jagoff in the first movie, too, but at least there he was somewhat charming, and the mistake that leads to Kevin being left alone made sense. You could also root for him against the bumbling burglars played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. In the second flick it was all so obvious what was going on. Culkin tried to make it work, but the whole thing was a mess. Culkin couldn't save it.

4. C.K., in Madhouse (1990)



C.K., as played by Aeryk Egan, is a perpetual troublemaker. He's always getting into something stupid and destructive (he loves messing around with fireworks, he wants to put a cat in the microwave, and he enjoys mowing expletives into the lawn). His father, played by the immortal Robert Ginty, has no real interest in "correcting" his son. Ginty's character is just there to house the little bastard. C.K. is kind of funny when you first meet him, but the more he tries to kill that cat and the more he mouths off to John Larroquette's Mark Banister the more annoying he gets. And as a house guest of the Banisters, my God, why the hell didn't Mark try to shove him into the microwave? Perhaps C.K. would be more interesting if he only had like two or three scenes. But there's just too much of him in the movie.

3. Kevin Buckman, in Parenthood (1989)



Kevin Buckman is annoying, yes, but it's not his fault. His emotional issues are likely the result of lax parenting and or chemical contamination in the womb (his father told school officials that his wife, Kevin's mother, smoked pot while she was pregnant with him). Kevin's problems could also be the result of heredity, as his father shares some of the same obsessive compulsive anxiety issues (for instance, Kevin's father washes his hands like a psychopath). Knowing all of that, when Kevin freaks out in the restaurant about his missing retainer, you just want to smack him. You know you shouldn't because, again, the kid has problems. But why does he always need to freak out like that? With the whining and the crying and the yelling. My God, man. Shut the fuck up, Kevin. That's ultimately why Kevin is supremely annoying. He makes you feel bad when you're annoyed with him. Little bastard.

2. Kathy, in Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)



You can't really hate poor little Kathy, especially after she gets shot in the chest by some scumbag gang member. She was just asking for a new ice cream. She didn't know what was going on. She was just a little girl. But, yeah, she's pretty freaking annoying right up until she gets shot. Granted, she's just a little girl and doesn't know anything, but that's no excuse, is it? She has no idea how corrupt the police can be, nor does she know how awful the "real" world can be. She's just repeating what her teachers told her in school, that the world is a generally nice place and there are people out there that will help you. What the heck ever.

1. Trixie Young, in Problem Child 2 (1991)



The basic problem with Trixie Young is that she's just too young to be taken seriously as the female equivalent to red headed devil child Junior Healy. The trouble she makes and gets into just comes off as contrived nonsense because the movie "needs" a foil for Junior. Had Trixie been a little older, or at least came off as a little older, she wouldn't have been so annoying. Now, had the movie decided right from the get go to make them brother and sister, a team, maybe then "Trixie" might have worked. The movie would have been funnier for one thing.

JEREMY THOMAS

5. Curly Sue (Alisan Porter), in Curly Sue (1991)



Honestly, it was tough between this and Kevin McCallister as to who to choose, because Curly Sue seems very much the result of Home Alone. Cutesy, precocious (you'll be seeing that word a lot) kids were a big hit all of a sudden, and so we got Alisan Porter giving one of the most exasperatingly "cute" performances of all-time. The plot of the film is bad enough but Curly Sue is characterized in such a way as to pull on our heartstrings and make us smile at the hijinks, and it just doesn't work. At all.

4. Rachel Ferrier (Dakota Fanning), in War of the Worlds (2005)



I have a confession--I really didn't like Dakota Fanning until her recent teenage roles. I felt she always played the cute, precocious kid who was there for people to go "aww" over, and it never sat well with me. Not until War of the Worlds though did I truly loathe a performance of her. Young Rachel is the most irritating part of a mediocre film, whining her way through the entire thing. Now I know, it's the end of the world so of course the kids are going to whine, but compare her with Kodi Smit-McPhee in The Road. That kid had some emo moments but came nowhere near what Rachel did.

3. Nim Rusoe (Abigail Breslin), in Nim's Island (2008)



Only one young girl actress has managed to out-annoy Dakota Fanning, and that was Abigail Breslin. I liked Little Miss Sunshine but not because of Breslin. As Nim Rusoe, Breslin took annoying and precocious to an entirely new level. This character is smug, oh-so-smart and just obnoxious in her cute factor. Granted, it didn't help that Jodie Foster and Gerard Butler weren't great either, but Breslin was clearly the worst part of a very bad film.

2. Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)



Few kid portrayals have raised as much vocal derision from moviegoers as the job Jake Lloyd did portraying a young Anakin Skywalker. Jar-Jar seems to get the loudest Phantom Menace hatred but I know some people who can at least tolerate him. I don't know anyone who has the slightest amount of appreciation for young Anakin, who is quite possibly one of the worst and most annoying portrayals in cinematic history. The Force was definitely NOT with George Lucas in this casting choice.

1. Junior (Michael Oliver), in Problem Child (1990)



This kid is the benchmark for measuring irritating, annoying kids in film. Granted, he's supposed to be irritating and annoying, and Michael Oliver certainly put forth his best effort. The problem is that he made Junior SO unlikable that there is no redemption for the character. I just don't care--I want to see John Ritter put a bullet through the little bastard's head. This kid makes Damien from The Omen look like a choir boy and he does it in such a grating way that he instantly makes me want to turn off the TV.

Be sure to share your own lists and/or complain about ours below. See you in a week with a brand new topic!